Bot invasion, advertising budget squeeze, and competitive wars. Why the effectiveness of Google advertising in the B2B segment is being questioned and is it really that bad?

«For every $1,000 budget in Google Ads, the number of targeted leads was measured on the fingers of one hand, and they are of poor quality»

Hryhoriy Osadchy, CEO of Phonet, a company that provides IP telephony services for businesses, believes that Google is not particularly interested in solving the above-mentioned problem, at least he does not see any efforts in this direction.

«Google is not interested in fighting this, because it is in Google’s hands. When Google says it wants to fight bots in advertising, it sounds like „children against sweets“. They have no intrinsic incentive to do this, because the more effectively they fight, the less money they will receive. It makes no sense to them,» he claims.

According to Hryhoriy Osadchy, advertising agencies that work with businesses on Google Ads are also not too concerned about this, because they present conversion figures from Google’s data. And the fact that leads are untargeted or generated by bots is «none of their business.» Even if at the beginning they talked about the importance of generating targeted leads.

When Phonet managers start contacting the phone number left in the application, it turns out that those who answered say that they didn’t order anything. Sometimes it becomes clear that there is no interest in organizing telephony in principle (from other companies as well). That is, if anyone answers at all from «that end».

«The advertising cabinet shows in numbers — a conversion has taken place. And at the end of the reporting period, each agency says — look, last month you had 500 conversions, and this month we made 550. But how will we calculate those among them who are targeted? No way. We have general figures from Google and that’s it, and internal lead scoring (quality assessment) cannot become the main guideline,» says the CEO of Phonet.

According to him, for every $1,000 budget in Google Ads, the number of targeted leads was measured on the fingers of one hand, and they were of poor quality. At the same time, Grigoriy Osadchy claims that his team has a detailed knowledge of the topic and has collaborated in this area with experienced and well-known agencies.

«We’ve gotten to the point where there are more bots than real applications,» the tech entrepreneur says. According to him, managers are simply wasting their time checking applications from bots and untargeted leads, contacting these individuals, and talking.

He adds that the conversion cost is already set up right in the «analytics», and the conversion is counted only after the payment is made, and the Thank You Page displays «Thank you, your payment has been accepted». «And for us, in the B2B segment, it’s just about a free consultation and the first communication with the manager, not about the product in the basket,» Osadchy explained the significant difference in Google advertising between B2B and B2C business.

The Phonet CEO also admits that advertising budgets may be «convened» in the interests of competitors in the relatively narrow market of IP telephony for businesses, who are willing to pay for the implementation of such a «gray» service. According to him, he has heard this opinion from other market participants.

«The agency we worked with says that other agencies actually sell their services to help businesses compete with competitors,» Grigory Osadchy told us.

Under such conditions, as the CEO of Phonet says, everyone is actually satisfied with the situation, except for the advertiser himself. «Bots help Google earn money and help agencies carry out their work and conversion plan. Competitors are interested in having your advertising budget called in, spending it on as many untargeted applications as possible. And, it turns out, everyone is satisfied. The only one who is dissatisfied is the advertiser himself,» Osadchy noted.

According to him, for now, his company has abandoned the use of Google Ads contextual advertising, although it is psychologically difficult for many businesses to do this, because «everyone does it» and «it should be that way.»

Although, according to Hryhoriy Osadchy, the situation was much better before — both with targeted leads and with the ability to contact specific technical support representatives at Google, who helped solve a number of technical problems.

«Previously, you could contact Google, and we did. There, very expert people answered, who really understood the office, advertising, and settings. The legal department quickly blocked if someone illegally used a trademark in advertising. If they returned what was there, it would have already provided significant improvements,» the tech entrepreneur believes.

«There are cases when click farms are hired, who sit in a makeshift office somewhere in a garage and call for advertising»

GigaCloud CMO Anastasia Menaylova is much less categorical about Google Ads as a tool. «Google Ads is a tool for working with already formed demand: it shows advertising in response to specific queries in the Google search engine, when a person is already interested in a product or service and is actively looking for a solution. With the right settings, it allows you to collect „hot“ targeted leads and gives predictable results. For us, the problem of „fake“ leads is not massive,» she noted in a comment for dev.ua.

According to Menaylova, low-quality/untargeted leads do indeed come, but the situation of customers in Ukraine who come through Google Ads tools has changed significantly over the past three years. And this, according to her, is also caused by economic conditions, and not just bots. «Therefore, protection against bots is needed, but, in our opinion, this is a controllable problem,» she believes.

As for the factor of crowdfunding advertising budgets in Google Ads, CMO GigaCloud confirms that such a phenomenon really exists, but it is not a common practice. «Of course, there are certain suspicions about „cropping“ of advertising using bots or manually by competitors, especially in B2B with high competition and cost per click. There are cases when click farms are hired, who sit in a makeshift office somewhere in the garage and crowdfund advertising,» she noted.

CMO GigaCloud claims that most players in their market invest in high-quality optimization, content and analytics, and not in manipulation. In addition, most of them understand that such a strategy is short-term and not very effective. «If we noticed such activity against us, we solved these problems quite easily with traffic filtering tools: there are many affordable solutions on the market now that are cheaper than launching fake call «attacks,» she says.

According to Anastasia Menaylova, the most problems arise with Google’s technical support, especially the lack of live support (by phone or chat) for Google Ads in Ukraine through its official channels.

Also, according to her, problems arise due to the opaque blocking of advertising campaigns and the introduction of AI verification tools.

As for the difficulty of getting leads in the B2B segment, according to Menaylova, the problem lies in the more complex customer journey, unlike B2C. «Decisions in companies are usually made by more than one person (and very often not even the one who was shown your ad), and the process of agreeing on cooperation from displaying an ad to concluding a deal can take quite a long time. So Google Ads in B2B does not act directly as a lead generation tool, but should work in conjunction with other communication channels, supplementing the number of „touches“ to a potential client — there are an average of 7-10 of them,» says CMO GigaCloud.

Anastasia Menaylova summarizes that GigaCloud builds lead generation comprehensively and does not rely only on this tool, because working with a client is a long process that is not solved by one visit to the site.

«This is not exclusively a ‘Google problem.’ It’s just that Google’s scale is much larger — and accordingly, the risks are magnified.»

Co-founder of the digital agency Netpeak and founder of the B2B agency BASE Andriy Chumachenko, in a comment for dev.ua, claims that the problem of bots in Google Ads is real, although he did not outline general market statistics.

«Using the example of the B2B agency BASE, we see that about 5% of applications are fake: random names, fake emails, phone numbers that no one answers — it is obvious that there are no living people behind such „lead forms“. In client campaigns, the level of „bot traffic“ depends on the popularity of the brand and the competitiveness of the niche. In some cases, especially when the company is actively represented in organic search, the share of fake interactions can reach up to 10%,» he says.

Answering the question «why is this done?», the expert once came to the conclusion that this is how bot networks are trained. «They practice basic actions — for example, filling out a form — to then use in more complex scenarios where it is necessary to imitate the behavior of a real user, possibly to create more „human“ bots,» says Andriy Chumachenko.

«Collecting advertising budgets with the help of bots is one of the black tools in the competitive struggle in the digital advertising market. And the most unpleasant thing is that it is very easy to implement. There are ready-made bot farms, you don’t even need a technical specialist — just order the appropriate „service“ on specialized platforms,» says Chumachenko.

As an example of similar activity in a slightly different aspect, he cites attacks in telecom: for example, fake calls that massively overload companies' call centers.

«Criminals can even place the company number on sites with a large audience — for example, under the ad „I’ll give it away for free“. The flow of untargeted calls in such cases paralyzes the work of the sales department or support,» shares the thoughts of the co-founder of the digital agency Netpeak. According to him, attacks through «bots» are no longer fantasy, but a completely practical tactic that you need to be able to work with or minimize the risks.

As for problems in cooperation with Google, Netpeak does not experience them, as it has the status of Google Premier Partner, which gives the team direct contact with managers and the opportunity to resolve all technical and organizational issues with them.

«But don’t forget: advertising systems are tools, and they are used by both honest businesses and those trying to circumvent them. This is not exclusively a „Google problem“ — similar patterns can be seen in both Meta Ads and LinkedIn Ads. It’s just that the scale of Google is much larger — and accordingly, the risks are magnified,» he explains.

Getting quality leads in Google Ads in the B2B segment, according to the expert, is a complex process, but the difficulty lies not in the tool itself, but in how accurately and coherently you build each stage of the funnel. He named five levels, each of which affects the result.

• Target audience. Many companies choose the tactic of maximum reach, hoping that someone will be interested. But this does not work. Google algorithms optimize better when the audience is clearly defined. Otherwise, either there is little traffic or it is not targeted.
• Advertisement. It should be honest and relevant. If the advertising text promises one thing, and after clicking — a completely different one, the person will simply leave. For example, in the title — «pizza», and on the website — sushi. You pay for the click, but you have lost trust even before the first dialogue.
• Website. Where the ad leads is key. In 7–8 seconds, the user should understand where they are and why they need it. If this is not on the first screen, you have lost the lead. Many sites lack basic UX: it is unclear what the company is offering, where to click, what will happen next.
• Application form. In the B2B niche, the form is often too complicated: even if you want to send an application, it is simply difficult for you to do it. You cannot enter a phone number without +, send an application without filling out an email, you must specify the country and city. If you have few leads, simplify the form as much as possible. If the problem is the quality of leads, on the contrary, add more clarifying fields.
• First contact. How quickly does your sales manager get in touch after the application? Is there an auto-letter with confirmation and response timing? How well does the sales person understand the product and communicate with the potential client? «Everything is important here — because at this stage it is easy to lose a valuable lead,» says Chumachenko.

According to the founder of B2B agency BASE, all these levels are the advertiser’s area of responsibility, but there are situations when they are all set up perfectly, but there is still no conversion. In such a case, according to the expert, you just need to look for other tools and approaches.

«In complex B2B niches with a small number of leads, this can result in 100% fake conversions»

Head of PPC Department at Promodo Yulia Chub claims that the problem outlined above is quite relevant for lead generation in the B2B segment, unlike eCommerce projects.

«Its prevalence is high: more than half of clients encounter fake leads. This is especially true for projects where the main conversion is applications. Even on different websites of the same business, there can be more than 50% of fake applications,» she claims.

As a result, she believes, in complex B2B niches with a small number of leads, this can result in 100% fake conversions.

«Our advice: for normal operation, a „minus“ is necessary, but careful to avoid auto-blocking,» says the expert.

As the Head of PPC Department at Promodo added, they observe three main scenarios related to «convening»:

• direct competitive actions: they are easy to detect and resolve through traffic verification;
• bot attacks from competitors: these cases require a professional approach and long-term work with the advertising account;
• The actions of phishing agencies, according to Yulia Chub, is the third and most insidious option.

«They purposefully attack certain niches, „convening“ budgets, and then offer their services to solve the problem they created. There is an automatic, albeit expensive solution that requires customized analytics, Measurement Protocol (the data transfer mechanism in Google Analytics), working with „raw“ data, and integration with CRM,» the specialist concluded.

Yulia Chub made it clear that search campaigns in this niche give more stable results, since search queries can be effectively adjusted there, but when this tool brings too few conversions, they are forced to switch to Performance Max, whose smart strategies have certain features.

«The main thing is to try to reach all users to attract conversions, which can also include bots. To avoid breaking the logic of campaign optimization, we recommend optimizing them for the next (not the first) steps of the sales funnel. Although this requires mandatory verification of each application and technical intervention, such a step helps to weed out fake leads and focus on truly interested users,» the Head of PPC Department at Promodo gave her advice.

«From our statistics, people who came from Google have the lowest conversion into customers»

According to Roman Gerashchenko, CEO of Sasquatch Digital, despite their active public activities, presence in social networks and ratings, as well as in the news, a very small percentage of clients come to them personally from Google.

«From our statistics, people who came from Google have the lowest conversion into customers. The price is important to them first and foremost, they don’t know our value and reputation. I suspect that it’s the same in the entire B2B segment,» he says.

As for cases of competitors consolidating advertising budgets in the advertising market, he does not deny their existence, but he does not understand why such a path should be used, if, conditionally, in competitive wars it is much easier to turn to the reputational component than to manipulate the technologically complex consolidating of budgets.

«For example, if some person from the 90s decided that competitors should be destroyed at all costs, rather than developing with them, and found some specialist who could not dissuade them from this step, then they would start to „extort money“ from competitors in this way,» explains the CEO of Sasquatch Digital.

As for attracting targeted leads in the B2B segment, according to Gerashchenko, this is problematic not only because something doesn’t work in Google advertising itself, but also because of the very narrowness of the market and the difficulty of finding an audience.

According to Roman Gerashchenko, if, for example, it is about some industry, then information about companies is usually found in separate industrial directories, and Google is needed only to find this directory. «In this case, a contextual advertisement about such a manufacturer may appear. But will the client go to it right away? No! He can put it aside, check it, remember it, and then remember from the tablet that he saw such an advertisement, focus on it and click to compare it with the others. Like — I take the first 10, and I saw the advertisement for the 11th in Google. Well, okay, let’s take a look at that one too,» the agency’s CEO shared his thoughts.

dev.ua also contacted Google regarding the issues mentioned in the material, but did not receive a response.

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