Hi everyone,

I’m planning to run Google Search ads for an independent repair shop that specializes in Volvo vehicles. The business is not an authorized Volvo dealer or service center.

My understanding is that bidding on “Volvo” as a keyword may be allowed, but using the brand name in ad headlines can trigger trademark restrictions. Is that correct?

I see other independent shops running ads with “Volvo” in their headlines. How are they getting approved? Do they have permission from the brand, qualify under a policy exception, or does enforcement vary?

Would wording like “Independent Volvo Specialist” or “Volvo Repair & Maintenance” be permitted if both the ad and landing page clearly state that the shop is independent and not affiliated with Volvo?

I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who has dealt with this, especially in Turkey. I’m looking for a compliant way to advertise.

Hi ,

I'm new here. I'm currently building a startup. How do I get started with meta / facebook ads to promote an event for my startup? Or promotion of the event digitally in general, how do I get started?

I’m managing a Meta lead campaign for an India-based documentation service. Keeping the business anonymous, but sharing the important data for an honest assessment.

Audience and setup

• Target customers: Indian-born people living in the USA and Canada who need documentation services in India.
• Leads objective with Instant Forms.
• Indian-language targeting applied.
• Video creatives using educational, problem/explainer and customer-story angles.
• Attribution: 7-day click / 1-day view.

Campaign performance from launch

Reporting period: 22 September–21 October, approximately one month.

• Total spend: ₹58,545.23
• Reported leads: 50
• Overall CPL: ₹1,170.90

All amounts are INR.

The main problem

Earlier, audience relevance was a concern. The last eight leads checked matched the intended profile: born in India and currently living in the USA or Canada.

They were contacted and responded, but none of those eight submitted the required documents or converted into paying customers.

I’m not claiming all 50 leads had the same outcome. The confirmed issue is that these recent, demographically relevant enquiries aren’t progressing.

What we’ve tried

• Tested different video angles. Currently running an educational video and a problem/explainer video.
• Tried a replacement form with conditional qualification and SMS verification, but couldn’t reliably validate its behaviour.
• Reverted to the original form, which receives submissions.
• Recently enabled Meta’s recommended text enhancements.
• Daily ad set budget was recently increased from ₹2,000 to ₹3,000.

The recent edits happened after the full-period figures above. I haven’t isolated their impact, so I don’t want to attribute performance changes to them without evidence.

What’s still missing

I don’t yet have a reliable breakdown of why prospects stop before submitting documents—price, trust, urgency, process difficulty or something else. I also don’t have form-open and abandonment data in the exports reviewed.

What would you investigate first?

1. How would you distinguish an ad/lead-intent problem from a sales-process or offer problem?
2. What would you ask these eight prospects to identify the actual blocker?
3. Would you test clearer pricing/process expectations in the ad, stronger form qualification, new creatives or a landing page?
4. What metrics and stopping criteria would you use before spending more?
5. Is increasing the budget defensible when lead-to-customer progression remains unproven?

I want to reduce the cost of acquiring a paying customer, not simply collect cheaper enquiries. Specific diagnostic steps would be more useful than generic “test more creatives” advice.

Question for people running paid social for e-commerce: has anyone tested sending ad traffic to a chat-first experience instead of a product page? I mean something that feels like ChatGPT but only knows one store, where the visitor lands in a conversation that already starts with the product from the ad, can type something like a long-lasting men’s perfume for work under $130, and sees the matching products appear right inside the chat with a short reason for each, then adds to cart and goes to the normal checkout. The thinking is that most stores are like a shop with no staff, and a lot of visitors leave because nobody answers their questions about size, shipping or whether the product fits what they need. On the other hand, I can see it adding friction for people who already know what they want and just want to hit buy. For those of you managing client budgets, would you trust something like this with paid traffic, how would you measure it against a regular product page, and which verticals do you think it would actually help or hurt?

I’m currently running a Meta Ads campaign for a client,  a UK-based visa assistance service, and I’m facing an issue with ad delivery.

I created a campaign to generate enquiries through WhatsApp for their Schengen visa assistance service . The campaign and ad set both show as Active, but the individual ad has been showing **Processing** since yesterday, October 22. The campaign has a £2/day budget, but Ads Manager shows only 1 impression and £0.00 spent.

I’m not sure if the issue is related to the ad setup, audience targeting, WhatsApp destination, review process, or budget. I’d really appreciate it if you could help me identify what might be causing this and guide me on how to fix it.

My company is currently going through a huge AI integration, and I’m curious if anyone else is experiencing something similar.

Every department is being affected, whether it’s payroll, accounting, marketing, etc.

Management hired an outside contractor to implement these new AI systems, and he uses Claude for EVERYTHING. Every email he sends is clearly written by AI, and even when you ask him direct questions in person or during meetings, he seems unable to answer without using it.

Now, I want to make it clear that I’m not against AI. I work in marketing, and I understand how useful it can be. I also understand that implementing new systems takes time, testing, and adjustments.

But here’s where I’m getting frustrated.
This contractor has started multiple projects across our company, and from what I’ve seen, not a single one has been fully completed before he moves on to something else.

My biggest issue right now is a new internal website he built using Claude. The goal is to have pretty much everything within our company accessible through this one platform.

Sounds great in theory, right?
Well, he has now moved over 10,000 photos (probably more) from Google Photos into this new website, and it has made my team’s job significantly harder. Google Photos wasn’t the best but it sure as hell was better than what we have now….

Nothing is organized. Finding specific photos is nearly impossible. All of our albums created over the course of YEARS are gone. The website is incredibly slow, and it honestly cannot keep up with the pace at which our marketing department operates.

We’ve submitted multiple support tickets explaining these issues, and even when they’re marked as completed, the problems are still there. We’re spending more time trying to find photos and navigate this website than we ever did using our previous system. And it’s not just our department. He has multiple other projects going on where it seems like the same thing is happening. A system gets introduced, it’s not fully functional, employees submit support tickets, and then he moves on to the next project.

I’ve brought my concerns to management multiple times, but I’m basically told to do what he asks and continue using the platform. Now I’ve been working off of my desktop which today he decided everyone’s wallpaper needed to be the brightest white there ever was, you might ask “why don’t you just change it back?” HE REMOVED EVERYONES ACCESS TO CHANGE THEIR WALLPAPER. I can’t even read my file names because the titles blend into the white.

At this point, I genuinely don’t know what else to do.
What bothers me the most is that we already had systems that worked. They weren’t perfect, but they allowed us to do our jobs efficiently. Now we’re being forced to use something that is less organized, slower, and requires more work from us.

I’m also starting to wonder about the security and long-term reliability of having so much company information and media stored on a website built by one contractor using AI. What happens if he leaves? Who maintains it? What happens if something breaks?
Maybe I’m missing something, and that’s why I’m posting here.

For those of you who work in AI, software development, or have experienced AI integration at your company, is this normal?
At what point do you stop calling something a learning curve and start questioning whether the implementation itself is the problem?
I feel like we’re so focused on integrating AI into everything that nobody is stopping to ask whether it’s actually helping us.