PPCChat | PPC Horror Stories | 29th October 2024

Posted October 30th, 2024 by Amita & filed under PPCChat.

The PPC industry is vast, and experts often encounter challenging experiences with clients, ad platforms, and personal lessons that turn into lifelong horror stories. Here’s a screencap from this week’s PPCChat session, hosted by Julie F Bacchini.

Q1: What is a horror story regarding a platform (performance, support, etc.) that you have experienced?

I find it horrifying that I get contacted regularly by Google Ads regarding accounts that I have never worked on or had access to. @NeptuneMoon

Amazon is what I’ve been working in the most lately, and it is an extremely challenging platform from a buggy interface to managing inventory and identifying reasons for changes. @ferkungamaboobo

I feel the need to bring up the time I had to wait a month to get Google ads to admit they were opting my client into search partners without consent and I proved it with network segments. Google ended up crediting my client $5k @navahhopkins

Twice recently we had huge spikes in spend on our Exact Match Brand term. Search Terms report showed all impressions and clicks came from Exact Match. Lots of spend but no spike in conversions. Showed data to rep. Hoping for a credit. @JeffreyHain

Auto Apply Recommendations….. do I need to say more? @AndrewKrom

@ferkungamaboobo fully agree – that’s why they are throwing so many ad credits around. @navahhopkins

Classic Google Ads support story… having an issue that was majorly impacting client’s account and business and it took MONTHS to get any kind of resolution. Can’t count how many emails I got that were useless in that process. It is horrifying that Xfinity has better customer support than ad platforms! You know, cable company who has historically terrible customer service reputation??? @NeptuneMoon

We had a developer turn on consent mode in Google Ads (because of the helpful notification) and it totally broke offline conversion reporting. It took 3 different Google support teams and nearly 10 days to figure out the connection (it doesn’t show in the change log and I didn’t check there either). So beware of turning stuff on/off unless you know EXACTLY how it works. @robert_brady

@NeptuneMoon I’ve always wondered how much info I could get from the rep when I get those emails for accounts I’m not connected to. @robert_brady

@robert_brady If we were less honest about our not being on the account, I would bet a lot? @NeptuneMoon

Last night. Someone on my team was updating our campaigns for a regional promo and deleted all the ads in all our search accounts. She was very panicked on the phone, and it was then that I found we can’t re-enable recently created RSAs. She had to rebuild one by one. self-serve platforms are not for the weak! @JuliaVyse

More around what they aren’t doing than anything juicy. @ferkungamaboobo

Q2: What is a horror story regarding a client that you have experienced? You can fuzzy up details to protect the “innocent” if need be!

I was very, very pregnant and had made plans for coverage on the 3 accounts I had planned to keep while on maternity leave. All 3 were long-time clients. The one told me in our last meeting before I was due to give birth that they would be taking the account in-house to “take stress off of me.” @NeptuneMoon

Hilarious irony? They let the Yellow Pages take over their PPC and they proceeded to destroy all of the work I had done for them. Or the client who changed their entire website without telling me… and then was upset that I charged them my “drop everything” rates to fix the ad account. @NeptuneMoon

I will forever be haunted by “the proof is in the pudding” man who berated me for two hours for how dumb I am…that was an interesting onboarding call. @navahhopkins

I had a client way back who targeted all US states and all CA provinces with a travel-here message at different weights. A newcomer who “loves to read the Google blog” insisted that I make two new accounts, one for US, one for CA, with no shared insights or connections. She parsed the keywords in a truly weird way, and a year later after warning and supporting on the way, the new person asked “Why did we do this?” my honest answer: I don’t know. @JuliaVyse

Also, the lovely lawyer who decided to show his adult interests while setting him up with Microsoft ads. @navahhopkins

Working on the client side at the time, supporting the sales team. Our ad appeared in pos 2-3 most of the time. Sales team thought they saw a ‘weakness’ from our biggest competitor and wanted to be in #1 spot. I argued against but lost. Told the sales team most people don’t know what they’re looking for, and if they don’t see it right away they’ll click out and go to next ad. Long story short, we spent an extra seven figures in three weeks. Cost for completed sale went up 70%. Within a month the person who made the decision was gone. @JeffreyHain

Oh! Another one… I had a client whose industry was rapidly shifting. I did professional market research (with an outside researcher) to identify where it was going to position them in those sectors. The campaigns did gangbusters in producing quality leads in the new sectors. The client said that there was no real improvement in sales. Which I of course, dug into. Turns out their sales guys “didn’t want to follow up on those kinds of leads.” I wish I was kidding. My reply to the CEO was “Well, maybe you need some new sales guys.” @NeptuneMoon

The prospective one who put his hand on my leg or the one who called me “sweetheart,” I believe it was…@revaminkoff

Ewwww @revaminkoff I’m so sorry. @NeptuneMoon

I worked for an HCG client that was making money hand over fist…until Google banned HCG from ads. And he thought it was my fault. @robert_brady

I have also had to sue a client. That sucked. @NeptuneMoon

Saving one for the ‘Google Horror stories question’ For now: we had a toy client who wanted a campaign per product, per partner. that’s right. toy campaign 1 pointing at toysRus, Walmart, Indigo, and Amazon, and so forth. the concept of keyword overlap was a lightbulb moment. @JuliaVyse

The worst, and this was a learning experience for me, was a client who paid the startup fee and then asked for a refund after work had started. @ferkungamaboobo

Client demanded instant results with minimal budget, then blamed me for low ROI after a week. Unrealistic expectations turned nightmare fast. @AnthonyUgo

Q3: What is a horror story regarding a mistake you made in PPC?

$2000 a day is not $20.00 a day. @ferkungamaboobo

Oh man, here we go: when an end date change came through suddenly, I went ahead and changed the end date in Meta, but not the overall lifetime budget. spent a year’s worth of $ in two months because I rushed. @JuliaVyse

When Microsoft Ads first began, they had a sneakily unclear checkbox in geographic settings that said something like “show ads in other areas” that would pop up after you input a town or zip code. It made it seem like you needed to click it to enter more towns or zip codes… turns out it meant “let Microsoft so your ads ANYWHERE IT WANTED.” Needless to say, my client who had a very local footprint was not happy with that time period before I figured it out. @NeptuneMoon

Oh, maybe not PPC per se, but learning about SMTP after changing the way we handled emails on forms was uh fun. @ferkungamaboobo

My first real PPC job: launched a campaign on a Friday without the correct geo-targeting or budget — spent an insane amount of money by Monday and was convinced I was going to get fired. @revaminkoff

I think we have all had some kind of experience where a setting was input incorrectly and it caused lots of spend. @NeptuneMoon

Microsoft did almost completely ignore match types for a client – that was fun (but not anything we did). @revaminkoff

@revaminkoff We’ve all been there. @JuliaVyse

Stuff like that is why I set up a QA process before hitting “go Live’ with a checklist for the way we set things up. I really, really miss fixing process. @ferkungamaboobo

Playing whack-a-mole with Google Display. Even though settings were geo-targeted to seven small areas of Texas, I had to exclude multiple foreign countries (Iran, Turkey, China, Russia, etc.). @JeffreyHain

@JeffreyHain You still have to do that, honestly. I exclude every country I am not targeting and every state in the US I am not targeting for that exact reason. @NeptuneMoon

@NeptuneMoon I LOVE checklists! share your faves, in fact let’s build one, gate it and brand it. @JuliaVyse

I….. Hmm. Might actually have it. @ferkungamaboobo

@JeffreyHain I had a RAFT of locations in France show up in an early PMax campaign aimed at Quebec. Like, I get language similarities, but PMax, people in Lyons are unlikely to fly across an ocean for my fast food burger. @JuliaVyse

Targeting Georgia the country instead of Georgia the state. So odd to see Tbilisi in location reports. @robert_brady

Accidentally set a campaign’s daily budget as the monthly budget—spent thousands overnight. Heart-stopping lesson on double-checking everything. @AnthonyUgo

Spent a higher education client’s entire summer budget on retargeting store merch to prospective/current students. Once all the spend was used up they told me that spend was earmarked for the nursing program. It was a miscommunication on both ends (there was a campaign for that, but it was much smaller than I had realized). I looked STUUPID regardless. Got in hot water. 2nd year in PPC. @timmhalloran

Q4: Which ad platform do you think is the most horrifying to work on/with and why?

Programmatic. @ferkungamaboobo

Right now I would say Twitter/X for brand safety issues is up there. @NeptuneMoon

Meta. It’s just awful. tbf I’m in Canada, so that may colour my opinion, but we have no reps – no really, they all left – and it’s all just a browser-based best guess. Google has issues, and reps who can help (I know, I’m not mentioning help quality) Amazon is a MESS! but they do direct IOs with reps. Pinterest and Snap have reps that will build stuff and implement for you. Spotify is quite cheeky but has a person who can help out. And I really like my Reddit team. it’s just big blue that is NOT functional. @JuliaVyse

LinkedIn Ads. High CPC, complex targeting, and limited support make it a nightmare, especially for smaller budgets aiming for ROI. @AnthonyUgo

@JuliaVyse The lack of actual support for paying customers of ad platforms really is stunning. Can you imagine a similar setup in other industries just getting a pass as “well, this is just how it is” like ad platforms do? @NeptuneMoon

Truly baffling. and to totally use my privilege here, we spend MANY dollars with them. I don’t mean I can’t get a rep, I mean one of the Big 5 can’t get reps in Canada, because Meta sux that bad. ridiculous. @JuliaVyse

@AnthonyUgo I keep dreaming that Microsoft will just roll LinkedIn ads into Microsoft Ads! @NeptuneMoon

@NeptuneMoon Haha, same here! Imagine the relief—LinkedIn Ads with Microsoft Ads’ interface would be a dream come true! @AnthonyUgo

I’d love it if they rolled them together. It’d make them a lot more useful. Combine that intent data with in-market, affinity audience observ. layers with + bids on in-market categories. And then be able to see which target audience lists have the most traction. It’s like combining search, abm, and social all together in one place. Powerful. @timmhalloran

Microsoft Bing is doing some really shady things… partners network, not respecting match types, spending at weird times… @revaminkoff

@timmhalloran Absolutely! Combining LinkedIn’s targeting with Microsoft’s intent and in-market layers would be a game-changer. It’d supercharge B2B campaigns. @AnthonyUgo

I’d agree with Meta being the big horrifying mess. This is not a joke, or exaggerated: Out of 6 clients since June that have been sent to me to follow up on (because they want Meta-only ads), 4 of them have lost access to their own co. page, ads manager, business center, or IG profile. And not even an employee forgetting a password. Like, someone got into their acccount and removed all the other admins on the acct and locked it down, so they had to cancel their credit cards. 4 of 6. It’s so common now, I’ve started by asking if they’ve been hacked recently during discovery calls. @timmhalloran

@timmhalloran There are way, way too many stories like that regarding Meta. @NeptuneMoon

Side note: if you run Meta ads, you should verify your client has 2FA turned on in their Meta business manager. Not just your business manager, the client’s too. We make it mandatory at this point because we use our own credit cards for client ad spend, so it’s rolled into compliance. @timmhalloran

I’m a Meta guy, but Meta’s security is a nightmare these days. Unfortunately, this issue is all too real—2FA and dedicated security protocols are essential! Account compromises happen so often that asking about recent hacks has become the first step in my discovery calls. Once I close a deal with a client, I immediately advise them to set up 2FA—it’s crucial. @AnthonyUgo

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