The issue I would like for you to address is of course is the radical rise in the minim bid costs that many of us are seeing. To get at this problem, I spoke to one rep on the phone today as my personal rep is “unavailable” and has been all day. I sent a lengthy email to support early this morning (my rep) and left a voice mail for my rep to contact me immediately. So far the only response I have gotten was from the lower the level rep when I declined to leave another voice mail for my personal rep. She was very apologetic and nice, but didn’t know what was going on. She told me all the reps were told was to expect some changes, but that they were not told what the changes would encompass or whom the changes would affect. She said she had spoken to some customers today that had similar issues, but simply put she doesn’t know what to advise them as she doesn’t know what the new quality system looks for other than the generic stuff from the Google Ad Words page. She looked at my account, and I had her note the same ad had been running in excess of 2 years and had produced a click through rate of 26% in those 2 years, and she agreed it wasn’t really possible to increase the quality the ad itself. She had no idea how often the bot looks at the pages so you can see if changes you make actually improve your quality score.
Your employees have been uninformed and left in the dark about these major changes to your program, and perhaps more importantly your paying customers have been left in the dark as well. The smart thing would have been to come to the community months ago and said hey we are thinking about some major changes, these are how these changes are going to affect you, and here is what you can do to bring your landing pages up to snuff. That way your business partners would not be left holding the bag when they are hit with overnight radical price increases, and are forced to seek immediate answers from your employees who have also been left in the dark, and have no useful information to provide your customers. I would suggest as good business etiquette and professionalism would dictate you roll these changes back immediately and evaluate what you have learned from this. Then come forward and announce what changes you plan to make, describe in detail what accounts it will have a negative impact on, and provide in detail guidelines for producing the type of landing pages that you want. That way your business partners can make a business decision as to if they want to continue to do business with you under the new system.
Sincerely
Mark A. Libbert
Attorney At Law
P.S. If any Overture/Yahoo rep is lurking I have 10-12k a month buy for you.
Google has built in unpredictability and uncertainty.
The conclusion: If you plan to develop your web-based business, plan without Google!
There is no point in trying to please Google. Ad space is limited. The one that pays most, gets most. This is the only rule. Do not waste your time in optimizing your AdWords campaigns and in learning what Google wants. Unpredictability factor is increasing in a geometric progression. Too often recently, all your efforts are flashed down the toilet!
Is this change likely to increase Google's short-term revenues or decrease them? I see arguments for and against:
FOR: some advertisers will knuckle under and pay the higher min bids
FOR: if Google has measured this correctly, better search results will lead to higher overall CTR
AGAINST: many of you will reduce spend rather than pay higher min bids
AGAINST: many of those affected were hit unjustly, including relevant advertisers.
There are also arguments for and against this helping long-term revenues at Google:
FOR: less arbitrage and/or low-quality sites will result in more searches, higher CTR, more satisfied Google end-users.
FOR:?
AGAINST: this change, if as poorly implemented as many of you complain, will have affected the good and the bad, resulting in lower overall spend and minor migration of spend to MSN & Yahoo.
AGAINST:?
Personally, I'm not yet sure what this will do for Google's short or long term revenues, but expect that Google has done this in order to enhance long-term revs, but not necessarily short-term revs.
Thoughts?
I think Google will make some changes again.
Who knows, we might get some of our expensive keywords activated ( certainly not the cheap ones getting high CTR) .
I already see my main keyword starting to get impressions and clicks albeit at a 130% higher price.. But atleast it is not 500% as demanded by them.
This has all indications of a money grab to me. As genuine merchants up their bids trying to get some semblance of traffic, Google will start activating some keywords at those higher bids. At least this is what I am seeing.
- First and foremost, is it worth to invest the MONEY from a commercial point of view? Do you still earn money on these ad spendings? If the answer is no, then I'd suggest to look at alternatives.
- Is it worth to invest the TIME to fine-tune a campaign from a commercial point of view? How much is your time worth? Add this to the overall cost for the campaign, and see whether it still makes sense. Again, if the answer is no, look for alternatives.
- Can you live with the UNCERTAINTY your advertising partner provides? As a business, I like stability. If things get uncertain, you are often focused to achieve stability again instead of being productive. This makes sense, however, because planning for a business (employees, ad spendings, earnings) require a certain stability. Unfortunately, you can not really quantify this risk factor.
I agree with what has been voiced here that it does not make sense to whine here and hope for Google to realize which mistakes they made (if any). If it is still profitable for you to do business with Google, then do it. If it is not profitable, take your money somewhere else. It's binary - either you advertise with Google, or you don't. There is no between.
I also agree with the view that the Google behaviour is quite disappointing from a customer point of view, and as shareholder I would be rather concerned.
Long Term Capital Management
Enron
LTCM was stock full of PhD's, and not just normal ones, Nobel Prize winning PhD's.
The arrogance will not last forever unless major changes are made.
The nasty taste in all our mouths should be seen to by Google this week..Expect further updates and offical statements by the end of this week I would imagine.
I don't expect anything from then anymore, except fridges and crappy USB mice.
Personally, I'm not yet sure what this will do for Google's short or long term revenues, but expect that Google has done this in order to enhance long-term revs, but not necessarily short-term revs.
Not only to enhance long-term revenues, but also to protect long-term revenues.
I'm encouranged by it actually. It tells me we rattled their cage. There'll be a lot more rattling too before the week is out.
BTW, some American friends told me its really spelled 'schill' but I usually see 'shill'. Anyone know the correct spelling?
[edited by: Alex_Miles at 2:32 pm (utc) on July 17, 2006]
Not only to enhance long-term revenues, but also to protect long-term revenues.
EFV
You must be "in the know" making statements like that as if it is fact!
or is it just your opinion?
dazz
And by the way, I don't have any friends at Google . :-)
I don't have any friends at Google
me neither, if only! ;o)
To me it looks like a nice attempt to rid the system of MFAs that has gone slightly wrong.
Perhaps they should have tried doubling or tripling the minimum bid instead of this seriously high increase, then see how i goes.
all IMO of course
dazz
To me it looks like a nice attempt to rid the system of MFAs that has gone slightly wrong.
Could be. Nobody ever said that algorithms are perfect (as I've pointed out myself when finding ads for St. Martin hotels on a page that referenced Martin Luther).
Those earnings will look fine....
It's the next earnings that will be a DISASTER...
I'm shorting that stock like there's no tommorow!
It's shill.
Ah, thank you.
We should start calling google the extreme uncertainty search engine.
Google, which will report earnings July 20, recently raised prices for advertisers who buy irrelevant keywords
The spin doctors are already at work. It's interesting how it is very relevant keywords that perform well in terms of CTR and sales that are being affected. I guess that never made it into the press release....
Also, in a well targetted and profitable ad, the proof is in the pudding as to how relevant and enjoyable of an experience the landing page was. Saying otherwise is not in the best interest of the advertiser. (if it is, it is a mystery and is not short term. I'm not 100% against this change yet)
Again, bear in mind Google is no longer a Private company when you read into that.
Google also began limiting the number of sponsored results for searches that don't reference a product, so users aren't deluged with ads when they clearly aren't shopping.
I hope they don't really mean this. Because, if so, there goes one of the most effective and time-honored marketing gems, out the window, thanks to Google's supreme wisdom:
Forget about finding people with a problem that your product can solve. Why, your product couldn't possibly solve their problem. Because Google says so.
quality relevant landing pages every one of em ...
apparently there is market large enough for 5 advertisers for used socks
And used rubbers, too.
Eeeeeewwwwwww!
Oh, and it's not just Heroin that you can get on eBay. Apparently, any kind of illicit drugs you'd like, as well.
How dare google suddenly pull 90% of my ads, tell me that my landing pages are lacking 'quality' and then increase my CPC by 100%. It's unbelievable - I'm supposed to be the customer. When the PPC market eventually gets more competitive, we will look back on this and laugh at what google got away with.
As an aside:
if(AdFromEbay()) {
//ignore all other factors, 5 cents is fine.
}
else {
...
}
LOL - that's so accurate.
PS. EFV - back to the adsense forum with you ;)
I hope they don't really mean this. Because, if so, there goes one of the most effective and time-honored marketing gems, out the window, thanks to Google's supreme wisdom:Forget about finding people with a problem that your product can solve. Why, your product couldn't possibly solve their problem. Because Google says so.
Another marketer with a myopic view of what google is and isn't. Google realizes what it is, and it is not a shopping channel. I said that somewhere in this thread or another.... Some of you think Google exists to match consumers up with products to buy. That is called Froogle, not Google.
I think the move to limit ads on pages where people are extremely unlikely to be looking to buy something is an excellent move. Google is trying to protect its business. It makes all its revenue from advertising, but it smartly knows without users there is no advertisers, regardless of how nice they are to the advertisers. So you have to make an experience for the person using google can enjoy, so you have something to sell to the advertisers.
This is basic business...
Some of you think Google exists to match consumers up with products to buy.
That's what advertising is for, and (at least in theory) Google is selling advertising.
But they clearly have done nothing to limit ads on searches that people are unlikely to buy. There are tons of ads on stuff that is very unlikely to be a commercial term.
What makes you think they're finished?
