I ran across a post with the above intriguing title by Kevin Lee over at ClickZ, citing a number of reasons why advertisers in particular have become concerned about some of Google’s recent policy shifts and – more importantly – the possible intentions that can be deduced from those policies.
Here are just a few of the points Kevin raises:
- the proposed Google/Yahoo alliance, that would have made AdWords the gateway to nearly all Internet search advertising: not only marketers, but also US antitrust regulators perked up at this move toward potential monopolistic control.
- Google’s current PPC search results scheme, with the addition of query-specific Quality Score calculations and a bunch of unpublicized Quality Score factors: marketers have become increasingly nervous about the “black box” and lack of transparency.
- friction with agencies: Google has been augmenting its ad sales with traditional agency media planner roles, which understandably makes agencies apprehensive that marketers will find it simpler to go to Google directly.
Kevin concludes: “For the time being, Google remains a cornerstone of any online marketing plan. But it’s only natural that advertisers, agencies, and others might be concerned with Google’s growing strength.”
Isn’t it, though. But as a bit of a lifelong cynic, I never fully bought in to that “Don’t be evil” mantra (and for those who did, I’ve got a bridge that might be of interest…). Generally, we can count on companies to act in their long-term self-interest, regardless of what they say; and Google won’t be a whole lot different, if it intends to maintain that lofty stock price.
Which brings me to a related point; which is, why do so many advertisers willingly outsource their Adwords PPC management to Google? That’s like handing the fox the keys to the hen house. It may be a benevolent-seeming fox …but as Mother Nature should tell you, at the end of the day it’s still a fox.
I’ve always said Google makes it real easy to set up an account; heck, they’ll even do it for you. Because they’re nice folks and truly want to optimize your ROI from PPC? …not really; it’s because they want to make it easy for you to get on board with AdWords, and easy for you to maximize your spend on it for as long as possible.
But the real problem is… when Google sets up a campaign, they tend not to use the full panoply of best practices. Here are some sub-optimal tactics I’ve observed with clients’ AdWords efforts as managed by Google:
- Content advertising within a search campaign when they should be separate campaigns
- Content advertising when they should be setting up site-targeted content advertising
- A plethora of two-word keyphrases, when they should be using a majority of three- (or more) word phrases
- Using solely broad-match terms, when they should be employing multiple match strategies (phrase, exact and negative)
- Providing mere Adwords reports, instead of more insightful reporting through Analytics …never mind setting filters in Analytics to identify precisely what visitors have typed in the search query
These are all things that you can do better yourself …or certainly with the assistance of a qualified independent PPC consultant.
In the immortal words of Mr. T: “Pity the fool.”
