Google Advertising: Winning Battles to Win the War

The formula for Google AdWords ad rank changed significantly in August, 2005. As I'm discovering, there are still many advertisers who simply aren't aware of this. Many have taken leaves of absence from either paying attention to the details of paid search, or from in fact spending on it. I regularly encounter new clients who shut down their accounts 1-2 years ago because they weren't profitable, but they're now realizing they can no longer get by with "all organic," especially as the holiday season hits full bore. For those who still haven't combed over the extensive updates I've provided to paid subscribers, including this July 2006 newsletter update with the article "pure cash grab for Google, since the long term goal (increased big-advertiser community confidence) is the main reason for all this, but it doesn't hurt their revenues either. One thing that's being overlooked is the ongoing revenue bonus that comes from the new "keywords are never disabled, they can always be activated with a higher bid" regime. It sucks to bid $2.00 when you would love to try to keep a keyword "alive" at 20 cents as you could try to do under the old system. Then again, all those attempts to keep low-CTR keywords alive, ultimately failing, were a huge waste of everyone's time. I'm running a successful lead generation campaign right now where some cost-effective keywords are garnering clickthrough rates below 0.1%. Try doing that under the old system. Sure, it doesn't feel like a bargain because I'm bidding near $2.00 for keywords, with an overall average CPC 0f 0.68. But it's a campaign that works, that's the bottom line. That's why I'm a bit disappointed in Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl Bookmark Murdok: Page Zero Media, a marketing consultancy which focuses on maximizing clients' paid search marketing campaigns.