How much do you think McD’s has spent with Google to date? (I’m thinking, not much.)

Cool that you mention McD’s and that it would be a good idea for them to buy salad terms. I’ve only heard that in one other place, and that was in my book, in 2005.

Given that most ads we see for broad terms like “healthy salad” are still in direct response mode and few advertisers are using paid search in this way, it would appear there is room for growth on that front. From Google’s side, though, there appears to be a resistance to allowing broad advertising like this at a reasonable cost, as quality-based bidding might drive up CPC’s. Google’s stance may well be that Google Search isn’t the appropriate place to build broad awareness, but is it time for them to relax this stance?

Until they do, companies will have to build larger, more elaborate resources to attract more visits on the organic side, whereas they could do it in paid search with only a couple of landing pages.

Perhaps somewhere in the middle is the calls to action related to coupons and offers. Regardless, Quality Score’s still on the punitive side when user intent falls outside of typical direct response thinking. Although I’d like to think that means Google can easily up revenue by relaxing this in future, I think they run the risk of gaining a reputation for being too difficult to work with if they slapping Poor quality notations on too many keywords in too many large brand campaigns.