Something like "[myarea] open locked door" can have Google ad bids in the range ...

Scoundreller · on July 17, 2019

Whenever a company pisses me off, I turn off my adblocker, do a few searches for them or that industry, and click their ads whenever they appear.

I also like to see who’s advertising because it shows which industries/companies compete on marketing, instead of their own merits.

It really shows which products have high marginal profits.

cameronbrown · on July 17, 2019

> I also like to see who’s advertising because it shows which industries/companies compete on marketing, instead of their own merits.

Quite frankly this is wrong. You can have all the merits in the world, but if people don't know about it then you're out of business.

> It really shows which products have high marginal profits.

AdWords can be life or death enough that it's worth eating the cost because the alternative is not having a business.

cwkoss · on July 17, 2019

> You can have all the merits in the world, but if people don't know about it then you're out of business.

With the rise of social media, this is about 20 years out of date. If you have a great product and 100 users, 1000 people are going to see glowing testimonials at zero cost.

cameronbrown · on July 18, 2019

I strongly disagree. You're thinking purely from a software point of view - advertising is still extremely useful for any kind of local business or startup.