Of particular chuckle value to me was the line :
Since the start of the pay-per-click marketing campaign three weeks ago, traffic has increased from 471,000 to 589,000 unique users."Obviously we can't say that is all due to the campaign but millions of people use Google and the others and if that is where they are, then it is an obvious place for us to be too," said the Cabinet Office spokesman.
Clearly, tracking results, ROI etc... can't be measured.........
Ironically, we were a UK online for business partner prior to it's demise.
I think that in general the government is quite forward thinking in marketing via online methods.
I asked them how they could justify wasting taxes on such a thing and acting anti-competitively and they tried to deny it was even happening - even though I could click on their ads!
The real irony is that the whole reason they exist is to try and help SME's. By out-bidding us on our key terms they are making it more expensive for us to do business. Absolute idiots!
The top 2 natural listings where already official goverment sites (DTI and DWP).
What an utter waste of money. I mean, it's not like they can measure ROI on a non profit making site. They'll just look at the increase in visitors and go "Wow".
I think that in general the government is quite forward thinking in marketing via online methods.
Would have been better if they cut taxes to prevent temptation to import stuff without paying often duties - of course they'd rather tax X and then spent 0.1% of X on marketing :o
