I sadly agree with
@levelsio since about 5-10 years, ads only work if you have a lot of money, full stop.
my top 3 reasons why ads dont work for small biz:
- clickfraud
- super regulated: hard to "hack" ur way through ads
- always outbid
I already tried ads repeatedly and ROI was always negative
I hired the best people in the industry and ROI was still negative
I think the reason is basic economics:
I compete with VC-funded companies with $100M balance sheets who happily enjoy negative ad ROI if it means growing their user base
They can pay $1 per ad, lose $0.10, make $0.90, and it's still good because it means GROWTH. And growth means being able to raise another $100M for the next round. Then at some point they try push to profitability and IPO!
I can't do that cause I'm self funded, so everything I do has to be profitable
If you're competing for the same ad slot with those companies, you can't economically have positive ROI for very long. For a while yes, not for very long.