Google to PPC Branding: Drop Dead

Whoops… never posted the column last week. I’m sure you found some ways to get by, like watching Borat visiting the White House.

Meanwhile, I was writing about Google and how some new developments have signaled it’s taking an even more black and white view of pay-per-click search marketing and branding… namely, that the two aren’t compatible. This, however, can frustrate marketers’ own views and goals. Here’s a snippet:

This fits in with Google’s ongoing quest, sometimes to
advertisers’ frustration, of improving the relevance of its search results, both
paid and natural. If consumers are ignoring the paid ads, then those ads can
disappear from a prominent position altogether, thus showing more natural
results on the first page "above the fold" (without the need for scrolling).

This optimization of relevance can have its drawbacks, namely
because applied too far, it could stand as an obstacle between consumers and the
information they’re seeking. For example, if a certain ad generates a relatively
low click-through rate but a very high sales conversion rate and is highly
profitable for the marketer, most marketers would consider that effective, but
it doesn’t fit in with Google’s approach.

You can read the rest on the MediaPost Search Insider blog.