61–70 of 112 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think you can use a trademark in ad text. But companies still try to wiggle around this.
But you can use a trademark as an ad targeting term... which feels a little trademark-violation-y to me.
Looks like several companies have tried to sue Google for this, but Google threw a lot of money at the problems to prevent them from winning.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The primary revenue model for search is micro auctions to determine ranking of product placement on search results. Google monetizes search with ads. The micro auctions are for those ads. They even say "Ad" on each of them. If you have evidence that they're doing paid placement in the actual search results, I'd love to see it. FWIW, I do wish Google's ads were more obviously visually distinct from search results (a…
> Google monetizes search with ads. Google monetizes search but not with Google ads. This is the primary distinguisher. Its an auction selling space on page for a supplier to provide their own textual content. Google's online advertisement businesses don't sell space on Google pages, but online ad products for other peoples' pages. Google considers all of this as ad revenue, but distinguishes search from their advert…
The article fails to mention that shortly after this made the rounds in the marketing communities, eBay suddenly got a very large SEO penalty. Conspiracy theories aside, I once inherited a large Adwords account with nearly 25% of spend dedicated to branded KW bidding. Simply dialing back bids by 90%+ dropped impression share from 95% to 80%, but the paid branded clicks just shifted to organic branded clicks-- confirm…
Where search advertising works well for me is 'service' related advertising. As an example I have a burst pipe and I need to call a plumber out to my house. 10 years ago I'd go to the physical phone book and look up a plumber to call. I don't do that anymore now I type "my suburb name + plumber" into my browser. Where it does not work well is because I searched for the term 'plumber' every site I visit in my browser…
I'm not sure the first type of advertising is that useful. Why would I care which plumber paid Google the most money? I just want to find plumbers. I suppose you could make a 'search' engine by just letting people pay to show up on whatever keyword, but I'm not sure if that serves the same purpose as a general web search engine.
Yes, exactly! Also, To your second point, its in Google's interests that customers have no other way except paid ads to look you up. IMHO, Google has become a company that wants to install toll booths on the internet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure the first type of advertising is that useful. Why would I care which plumber paid Google the most money? I just want to find plumbers. I suppose you could make a 'search' engine by just letting people pay to show up on whatever keyword, but I'm not sure if that serves the same purpose as a general web search engine.
> Why would I care which plumber paid Google the most money? I just want to find plumbers. Yes, exactly! Also, To your second point, its in Google's interests that customers have no other way except paid ads to look you up. IMHO, Google has become a company that wants to install toll booths on the internet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've found exactly the same thing. It's extremely important to differentiate between branded and non-branded keywords. (And to be diligent about filtering out all variations, misspellings, etc., of branded searches from non-branded campaigns.) While our testing didn't show 100% waste in branded advertising, we did find approximately 80-90% of branded clicks would otherwise have come through organically. So we do sti…
The branded keyword game is very sneaky, though, and one place where google can (and does) make a killing. The trick is, if you have a particularly strong or unique brand, you can count on being the number one organic result. HOWEVER, if competitors bid on your brand and you do not, they end up above your brand in results as part of the the paid/promoted position. This usually forces brands into competing in paid pos…
For the folks who are jumping straight into the comment section to post your spicy takes on Google ads, the more interesting part of this article is in the second half, where it talks at length on being able to tease out actual causal inference, which I think is worth a read.
This article tackles one small and specific portion (bidding on branded keywords) of what paid search advertising is all about, so I think it’s fair to say that the title overstates the scope of the content. Paid search advertising has been subject to hit pieces for the past 15 years, often authored by people who are resentful of Google for some reason and happy to cite a bunch of statistics that don’t actually prove…
The old "all the successful companies are doing it, so it must be doing something" argument. Even within companies, incentives are skewed - do you really think a CMO would ever say, “maybe online ads don’t work, I don't need so many staff reporting to me anymore, take them away".
The onus is on the people claiming that it does something to prove it - I want direct, explicit evidence - where do I find it?
The article fails to mention that shortly after this made the rounds in the marketing communities, eBay suddenly got a very large SEO penalty. Conspiracy theories aside, I once inherited a large Adwords account with nearly 25% of spend dedicated to branded KW bidding. Simply dialing back bids by 90%+ dropped impression share from 95% to 80%, but the paid branded clicks just shifted to organic branded clicks-- confirm…
Yeah, once you realize the most profitable Google search terms are already the top organic result paying to be on top, you realize Google's business is the guy who shakes down storefronts for "protection" to avoid their windows being broken in by the local gang on a global scale. "That's a nice brand you built there. Ya know, it'd be a shame, a real shame, if one of your competitors was to end up above you on the sea…