Paid ads can make signups look better than they are
A first paid ad campaign increased signups, but many of those accounts were not real prospects. The bad traffic included fake , disposable email addresses, and accounts that never returned. reCAPTCHA was added, and raw signup count stopped being used as the main internal number.
The better metric became , meaning people who came back and completed the product’s at least once. That made the cleaner, but it only fixed the numbers after low-quality signups had already entered the system. The harder problem is judging signup quality earlier in the funnel, before weak or fake traffic makes growth look stronger than it is.
Possible approaches include bot filtering, , behavioral scoring, and controls inside the . The tradeoff is whether these steps truly improve customer quality or just add friction for real users.
Key points
- Paid ads brought more signups, but many were fake or low quality.
- Raw signup count was replaced with as the main metric.
- reCAPTCHA can reduce bots, but it may add friction for real users.
- Quality should be checked early in the funnel, before bad traffic affects reports.
- Useful filters may include bot filtering, , behavioral scoring, and controls.