ChasNote

Great column by David Berkowitz at MediaPost’s SearchInsider called “Google to PPC Branding: Drop Dead.” Even as Google makes moves that suggest it wants a piece of brand-advertising pie (the addition of site-specific graphical ads to AdSense, hiring the former president of Time Mag, etc.), it continues to show an aversion to advertising that attempts to pursuade (brand advertising) in favor of ads that fulfill on existing demand (direct response advertising). He cites Google’s own advice, published at the Inside Adwords blog:

“If your ad fully conveys your message without requiring the user to click through to your site, this could lower your overall quality score and in turn signal our system to not serve your ad.”

Advertisers should intentionally hold back information from their prospective customers unless they click to the advertiser’s site? Keep their value propositions a secret to all but those eager customers who click on their ads? Wow, that’s downright hostile to the idea of building awareness, not to mention annoying.

Further, Google has refined its algorithm to remove from results pages ads that don’t receive enough clicks. Here’s the penalty for those advertisers who disclose too much information in their ads!

“This could prevent top-ranked ads that appear most prominently from providing any potential branding value. Do ads in the top three positions (when there are three top positions) contribute to branding? Do they even play a subtle role, noticeable in aggregate, on sales? Do they give consumers a sense of confidence in the search results by showing a familiar brand there? Do they introduce consumers to new brands that the consumer hadn’t previously associated with that search query? Yahoo, in its collateral, reports extensively on how search marketing is one of the most effective ways of introducing consumers to new brands, with search being even more effective than word of mouth in some circumstances.”