cline - 7:02 pm on Nov 7, 2003 (gmt 0)

Just because some folks don't know how to use broad match effectively doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Moreover, the Adwords algo automatically weeds out the poorly performing match phrases, so an advertiser that is substantially misusing broad match is going to find their ads are gone from the SERPs.

And for those of us who make a living managing Adwords campaigns for clients, the complexity of the Adwords system is a good thing. To get optimal performance from Adwords requires some substantive expertise -- too much for smaller and medium size business to develop in house. It makes perfect sense for such business to hire consultants to do this for them.

For my clients the vast majority of the terms I target are broad match. I also typically use hundreds of negative terms. Such campaigns are a lot of work to set up, but they run circles around my clients' competitors that are running either exact match or unrefined broad match.

Give it time. The advertisers who don't understand Adwords will eventually either get a clue, get a consultant, or get out of internet marketing.