Posts tagged ppc
Google has just launched Boost, an extension of their Adwords PPC (paid search) offering. This location-based PPC ad product is intended for local businesses. Google Boost is currently available as a beta version in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago.
Don’t get too wrapped up in the hype over this (meant to make smaller, local business owners aware and excited to sink some money into it). This is basically PPC for the local search results - a way for google to get more $$ out of their existing search inventory. It’s debatable as to whether or not it will give “local” business a boost - more likely Google Boost will help big retail chains that have the budget, knowledge and resources to make this happen.
Google has been dragging their feet on making inclusion, correction, optimization and analytics for the “organic” local listings any more attainable by the small business owner - they profit more if you yearn for top ranking in the local results and are willing to Pay-Per-Click for it.
Google Adwords quietly updated its Keyword Tool on September 7th, resulting in a drop of up to 95% in search counts for some phrases. For those who rely the Google Adwords keyword tool to predict potential SEO performance or to identify phrases to optimize for, this update could throw them for a loop.
American Express OPEN, AMEX’s small business division, built an online advertising platform (supported by Clickable) to help small and mid-size companies overcome the complexities of paid search advertising campaigns. SearchManager, as it is being called, aims to simplify search engine advertising to drive sales for small business owners. The platform provides a dashboard and integrates Pay Per Click advertising platforms from Google (adwords), as well as the soon-to-be-merged Microsoft adCenter and Yahoo Search Marketing. AMEX SearchManager also supports Facebook ads.
Savvy scammers siphon the online traffic meant for your brand
A good overview article by Frederick Felman published on MediaPost talks points out that brand scammers are simply knowledgeable marketers that use best practices in interactive marketing - using the same tools as a legitimate brand marketer. Channels such as search engine optimization (SEO), paid search advertising (PPC), social media, and affiliate marketing. According to the article, Felman references that $13 billion is spent on search marketing each year, while HitWise finds that 14% of branded searches go to a site other than that of the brand. If you do the math - thats $1.8 billion of industry search budget being diverted. Factor in lost sales, increased support and service costs and negative effects on lifetime value of a customer and these numbers become even more sobering.
Google Adwords Automatic Matching was Poorly Executed
To my surprise, this is the alert that I received when I logged into my Adwords account this morning. It seems that Google has made a strategic decision that completely overstepped boundaries of ethics and common sense.
About Google Adwords Automatic Matching
Basically, the largest paid search advertising platform, Google Adwords, will now begin automatically adding new keywords to their advertisers campaigns. These words will spawn existing ads with the highest quality score (basically CTR) and drive users to the landing page associated with the ad. You can read the official Google Adwords Automatic Matching description if you’d like more detail; although I would imagine it will change as the industry reacts.
Google has been beta testing this Automatic Matching for a few months now and chose the day before a 3-day weekend to automatically enable this feature on Adwords advertiser accounts. At first glance some users might think this is great, since the platform will find and test new, related keywords that advertisers may have not known about. When looking at this decision by the Google Adwords team a bit closer, it is easy to see that this is not only a bad move, but more importantly, an unethical one.
Why Google Adwords Automatic Matching was poorly executed
1- No focus on REAL performance metrics
According to Google:
The system will continually monitor your performance on these queries and adjust its matches accordingly. Automatic matching aims to show your ads only on queries that yield a high clickthrough rate (CTR) and a cost-per-click (CPC) comparable to or better than your ad group’s current average CPC. This way, your ads receive additional targeted traffic at a similar cost to your current traffic.
Higher click-through rates (CTR) do not mean much for most advertisers, who are focused on the resulting user behavior beyond the click at the keyword level. Anyone that has ever measured conversions (sales, sign ups, key page visits…) knows how much variance there can be from one keyword to another, so adding new keywords with a high CTR only ensures one thing – Google is going to max out advertisers daily budgets.
Some may like getting the extra traffic, but for advertisers that are working on a tight margin, this could actually put their cost per conversion over their threshold, causing them to lose money due to an inefficient campaign configuration.
2 – Some Advertisers Keywords are Regulated
Having managed several pharmaceutical campaigns, I know that the specific keywords that are used require legal and regulatory review in order to ensure compliance with FDA regulations. Adding new keywords will automatically wind up tossing this important consumer protection layer out the window, possibly causing searchers to become misinformed about what conditions a drug effectively treats among other mishaps.
Aside from the pharmaceutical industry, I can see a lot of copyright infringement and brand misuse by affiliates and even companies themselves that have not added comprehensive negative keywords to their ad groups.
3 – Automatic Opt-In
Come on. Seriously. Automatically enabling this type of feature is straight up unethical. This should be something that advertisers can review and then decide on themselves.
4- Bad Timing and Lack of Communication
I can’t imagine that the Memorial Day holiday weekend didn’t cross the minds of Google Adwords decision makers when choosing a date to launch this feature, which is automatically enabled. How much additional ad revenue will they make by pushing the budget limits of their advertisers campaigns for a few days before everyone returns to work and has a chance to disable this feature?
Aside from that, I personally received no communication regarding Google Adwords Automatic Matching prior to logging in to my account just a few moments ago.
5 – Diluted Keyword Performance Metrics
According to Google:
- Performance statistics: Aggregated performance statistics for automatic matching will appear in each ad group’s Keywords tab, in a line item labeled Automatic Matching Total.
- Search Query Performance report: You can see the search queries that triggered your ads due to automatic matching by running a Search Query Performance report. The queries will be labeled Automatic in the Search Query Match Type column.
What this means is advertisers can’t even track the performance of their new, auto-added keywords on an individual basis. Google aggregates the new keywords as one channel and then allow advertisers to run a separate report to see what keyword terms actually are in that group.
For an innovative, “do no evil” company like Google, this kind of seedy…or rather greedy, behavior scares me. I’d like to see some changes to the new Automatic Matching feature - specifically the ability for users to turn this on themselves if they desire.
