Advertising With Google

    For this assignment, I created a digital advertisement for a web app another student and I created last year. The premise of the web app is simple, from the home page upload a photo of yourself, you are then taken to the next screen where you see the results of Google’s facial emotion recognition API, when viewing the results you have the option to share your image on the corkboard.

    To advertise the site, I looked at options on Facebook and Google. Facebook appeared to be more robust than the Google offerings in terms of demographics and targeting. However, because the web app is a stand-alone site with no Facebook presence, I was unable to do a Facebook campaign. Settling for Google, I created a simple text ad to minimize cost. I did not have any demographic options available but I was able to modify the keyword themes that would trigger ad placement.

    I chose keywords such as “emotion recognition”, “image identification”, and “photo recognition”. The obvious demographic of choice for the site would be teenagers. I was somewhat relieved not to have demographic options available as the web app does not have all the necessary fine print needed in place for handling traffic from minors. While incidental traffic is one thing, targeting traffic from minors is another. I was howerever able to target mobile users versus desktop users. The call to action for targeted users is uploading a photo for analysis, positioning the site as a novelty or impulse interaction.
    Overall, the Google Ads experience was terrifying, and the results were lackluster. There was no way to set a cost cap to meet the project scope, the lowest cap available being $152 a month. Reduced to refreshing the screen to gradually increasing numbers in the “Spend” column, I watched it through day 1 with a little over a dollar spent. Day 2 had no activity posted, followed by day three with the total spend just under $10. For $10 The Daily Gauge was given 1,161 impressions resulting in 31 clicks through to the site. Out of those 31 users, not one tried uploading a photo to see the results.