Is it just me, or are the ads getting worse?

Don't people know how to make a good ad anymore

[hannamyluv]

Lately, I have noticed that many adwords ads I am seeing on google are just bad. As in they don't follow the proven rules of a good ad. Things like, mentioning the KW you are advertising on somewhere in the ad, or pushing some extra feature on your site (Free/Fast shipping, in stock, price).

It seems I am seeing more ad like this

KW - widgets

Ad #1
Widgets at abc.com
abc.com is a great
place to shop!

Ad #2
abc.com
abc.com is a great
place to shop!

I'm kicking butt in the areas I have been targeting, even though there is alot of competition b/c the other ads suck. Is anyone else noticing this?

[uncle_bob]

I think many businesses that are coming to adwords have no real prior advertising experience, so it is not suprising that the text of the ad is so poor.

I've tried getting some clients to get a marketing professional on board to help them, but they rarely want to spend the money, instead they pour good money after bad on low quality ads

They wouldn't think twice about getting professional help for posters or newspaper ads, but somehow adwords doesn't seem as difficult.

[PPCBidder]

I'm kicking butt in the areas I have been targeting, even though there is alot of competition b/c the other ads suck.

So what exactly is the problem here? ;)

[progypsy1]

Your keyword dilemna sounds like an old, somewhat outdated tactic of having the keyword in both the subject and description fields. Most of the search engines no longer consider this tactic any more relevant than cloaking.

My take on AdWords is that they are adopting some rather outdated methods on a new marketing medium. My money is still on AdWords, despite their contradictory policies.

[edit_g]

Your keyword dilemna sounds like an old, somewhat outdated tactic of having the keyword in both the subject and description fields. Most of the search engines no longer consider this tactic any more relevant than cloaking.

I think hannamyluv was talking about having the keyword which was searched for in the ad copy...

Ads like the ones in hannamyluv's examples are detrimental to the whole program (i.e. they make users feel all the ads are irrelevant). But it still brings a smile to my face when I see people doing it. ;)

[hannamyluv]

So what exactly is the problem here?

As, edit_g pointed out, I am worried about users developing ad blindness in the same way they developed banner blindness.

It started out as a few shopping search engines (and auction sites) buy 1000s of KWs and lazily using the fastest way to put up ads for those huge amounts of KWs. Not a big deal, really but here comes the problem.

I am seeing increasingly more people copy those ads. I know what the thinking is... The smaller companies figure the bigger companies have done the research and therefore their ad format is best. They don't realize that the big companies have 100,000+ KWs to put ads up for and are just being as fast about it as possible.

It also seems that the bigger companies seem to be getting a whole lot more leaway when it comes to relevance of ad. I have seen more than a few KWs where the near genaric ads (and their landing pages) from the big companies are, at best, a stretch to say they are relevant.

The long term effects of such a trend (The genaric, lazy ad format) could really hurt CPC and adwords. With the smaller companies, they will go away when their ads don't make money leaving only the big companies.

But nearly every retail product KW now has ads from shopping.com, shopzilla (formerlly bizrate), ebay shop.com and nextag. Walmart, Kmart and Target are now getting into the game. All of them use the genaric format and all of them will not go away b/c I think they feel that they must occupy that space for branding reasons. All of them also have huge budgets and most pay top spot. That's 8 companies. There are 8 regular spots and 2 premium on a page. 5 companies with the same genaric ads dominate the entire adwords program these days and 3 more are moving in to try to dominate.

The other effect is, that with so many sucky ads lining the sides, all ads have poor CTR. If I remember correctly, adwords now judges the relevance of an ad more on their performance in relation to other ads on that KW, so sucky ads will be less likly to be taken down as they all perform poorly.

I truely feel if this continues, surfers will come to have ad blindness as they will already know which companies are lining the sides.

[gazraa]

i totally agree with hannamyluv.

I'm someone very new to adwords, so looking at what others do to construct their ads is useful to me. I'm not about to just copy ads, but I can see that there doesn't seem to be much thought going into some ads out there.

Would anyone be able to give a 'newbies quick guide' to creating a half decent ad?

My adwords experience totals about a week so far and I'm struggling to create ads that read and work well.

edit: just spotted this thread [webmasterworld.com...] but it doesn't give a lot away

[hannamyluv]

Have you read the guide from adwords themselves?
[adwords.google.com...]

They provide the the basics that can help alot.

The library here helps too.
[webmasterworld.com...]