Google’s Evil Way with Content Match

Google is mostly ethical and mostly gets stuff right. But every so often they do something that just has the stain of evil running through it. Google’s Content Match Advertising is just one of those things. I can see how they worked their way into it, and why the lure of cold hard cash keeps them coming back to the dealer to get another fix, but it is still wrong.

The challenge is this… Why would you give new users unexpected costs, on a medium that is most prone to click fraud, requiring different adverts and different thinking, as a default choice? Shouldn’t an ethical organisation make sure that the defaults were safe choices for users rather than revenue maximisation?

Keyword search is pretty easy to understand. It’s what most people think about when they sign up for AdWords or Yahoo!Search Marketing (Overture). You offer a keyword. If, in the opinion of the search engine, your keyword matches a users’ search, your advert has a chance to run, depending upon the bid you offer and competitor bids.

Content match is different. Publishers sign up to offer adverts. The search engine looks at the page content and decides what advert to offer. It uses the keywords as a guide, but there’s no need for the keyword to be present on the page. Google’s publisher program, the flip side of AdWords, is called AdSense.

The adverts play a different role, too, in content match. When you do keyword search, you have in mind that you want an answer in the form of a link and snippet. Content match offers you adverts when you are reading page content. It’s a different type of interaction and strictly requires a different message and maybe even a different landing page. But Google forces users, by default, to offer the same advert and the same landing page to all users.

We call the difference in usage between keyword search and content match a difference in intent. Many large advertisers refuse to use content match, or will only use content match if they can offer a much lower price. The reduced intent of someone reading an article and clicking on an advert, means that the ROI is reduced and that means the bid should be reduced, usually very significantly below that for keyword search.

Google’s AdWords Training blurs the line and says that content match can be optimised. In my experience that is, strictly true, but misleading. We have seen some optimised adverts that had a good ROI - but it wasn’t a consequence of keyword search activity, it was explicitly set up to address content match only - at a lower bid price. The training does not talk about creating separate campaigns to address the different target and offer different audiences and context. That omission is deceptive, and I suspect it is done purely for the income.

No one with any marketing competence should be claiming that keyword search and content match reach the same audience in the same phase of the buying process with the same cue frame. It’s so obviously different that Google relax their normal keyword search stringency and let content match adverts run with a CTR that is a fraction of the minimum required for keyword search.

In fact, Google themselves admit that the purpose of the adverts is different! They’ve recently started charging a higher minimum Cost Per Click if a landing page offers AdSense adverts. That is, Google know that someone who has done keyword search doesn’t want to wind up on a page that offers more adverts - they want an answer. So forcing the same advert at the same high price to a content matched page is clearly the wrong thing to do.

Yahoo! gets it right, or more right. There’s a different screen for Content Match and you can turn it on and off as you wish. Google’s AdWords enables content match by default, hides that choice in a screen that users don’t normally see (unless troubleshooting) and offers bids at high prices, matching keyword search. That’s certainly good for AdSense publishers and good for Google’s revenue. Is it good for advertisers? Emphatically no.

Making life for small advertisers worse, there’s a trick that many of them don’t know. It’s been tagged “Laser Straight Alignment” by “FireFly” over on the Google Groups AdWords Help forum. If you fail to do it, you see a high Minimum Cost Per Click (MinCPC), typically around $5 per click. When an experienced AdWords advertiser sees that $5.00 price, we know what to do. Small and irregular advertisers have no idea.

Now, this method of site revenue building is often used by quite large and reputable publishers. But it is also part of the formula for “get rich quick, on the internet”. And if the revenue isn’t coming in fast enough, well, what harm does it do to click on the adverts on your own site a few times to speed that up? That’s click fraud, or one form of it, at least.

So, which advert do you want to click on, as an AdSense publisher? You want the advert with the highest MinCPC. That $5.00 advert from the small business, for example.

The kind of small advertiser who doesn’t understand that they’ve got Content Match enabled by default, at keyword search bid prices, gets a few fraudulent clicks at their $5.00 MinCPC. That may well be their entire budget for the day… Their advertising can be ruined by content match clicks. It’s just wrong.

Let me get the picture absolutely clear:

• Small advertisers often face a $5.00 MinCPC, through inexperience
• Click fraudsters want high cost clicks
• Google misinforms advertisers that Content Match works like keyword search
• Small businesses aren’t aware that Content Match is enabled by default, at keyword prices
• This combination of policies doesn’t put the best advert in front of content match users, but the most inexperienced advertisers, who generate the most revenue share for Google
• If anyone suffers from AdSense Publisher click fraud, it’s the highest CPC advertisers, those small and inexperienced advertisers

This isn’t Google acting in the interests of users, of AdSense publishers and AdWords advertisers - it’s simply selfish money grabbing at the expense of misinformed hard working, small businesses. That’s wrong.

There is a good article, which is reasonably frequently updated to keep abreast of the best practice techniques, over at Richard Ball’s site, Apogee Web Marketing. I was going to write up the techniques here, but I wouldn’t say much different… The article is just a little outdated at the time of writing, because Google do now offer better separation.

FWIW, we have been working on a technique for larger advertisers that will help improve ROI on content match. The AdWords API pricing foolishness prevents us from bringing those techniques to a larger market of small businesses at present.

Updates

25th April 2007

This article needs to be replaced by a newer article about content match, Google and other advertising systems. While some parts of the critique are still true, Google has modified some of its’ practices and that should be reflected.

18th January 2008

Google has published new recommendations for using the Content Network that largely follow the advice here, and expand on it. The products still offer defaults that are deceptive, but at least the advice is changing.