Do Google interfere with Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns too much? Recently we had Automatic Matching, where Google takes it upon itself to show your ads for keywords not in your keyword list. We also have the three optimisers: 1) the ‘CPA Optimiser’ (Google alter your bids in order to achieve your conversion targets), 2) the ‘Campaign Optimiser’ (Google analyse your budget, keywords, ad text and landing page and create a customised proposal for your PPC campaign) and 3) the ‘Website Optimiser’ (Google constantly re-jig your website landing pages to find out which work best). Most annoyingly of all, Google overrides the way you segregated your ad groups with their ‘Ghost Ads’. These are ads that break out of their ad group to show for other ad group keywords, whether they are related or not.

As a PPC Account Manager, it seems that Google is trying to put me out of a job! Obviously it is in Google’s interests to help advertisers as much as possible and to make their PPC campaigns successful. This way, they will continue to advertise on Google and make the company money. However, the cynic in me thinks that a lot of these meddling tools push the money making agenda too far. For example, every Google account is automatically opted into Automatic Matching – it is not optional. This is something that spends more of your money by adding keywords you never asked for and most clients I speak to had never heard of it. Indeed, when Google launched this important feature, they didn’t exactly scream it from the rooftops.

This said, I feel there is a broader point to make here. For me, Google is doing too much and making people lazy when it comes to managing their PPC campaigns. As Google do more and more things for you, people won’t take the time to learn about PPC advertising and what does and doesn’t make it work. They will simply switch everything to Google autopilot and put their feet up. But when things go wrong, when the conversions dry up and cost per conversion rockets, these people won’t have the slightest clue what to do. Unless of course Google come up with yet another interfering beta … a PPC Panic Button!

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There are a number of different ways to advertise online - Pay Per Click, SEO (combined for search marketing), Affiliate marketing, and Display advertising. But what is the best to do and how would you invest your money? Well there isn’t a right or wrong answer but there are certain guides and techniques that should be applied.

In the long run, your best bet is the search marketing avenue. Over any other form of marketing (apart from viral marketing), Pay Per Click and SEO can drive huge volumes of business through your site. Pay Per Click, done correctly, can be very targeted and up within minutes. Our clients benefit from instant advertising where adverts can drive return within minutes. According to statistics, though, PPC only drives one in every three clicks from search engines. Therefore it is important to have an SEO strategy in place or if you are lucky enough to have good positioning already on your key terms then you will benefit greatly.

But what about the others? Surely there is more that can be done to bolster it up?

Well Display Advertising was the first form of advertising online back in 1994 / 1995. There is still some debate as to who had the very first banner ad on their site, however in the grand scheme of things it is very trivial!! Display ads, or rich media, drive awareness in products, services and brands. You will have seen these adverts all over the place on many websites. Google has an extensive content network of partner sites where you can place PPC adverts strategically positioned next to relevant content. For example, an insurance broker will want to position an advert on timesonline.com next to an article about the growth in the insurance market. The advert can be in text, image, or video format. You may have also heard of Affiliate marketing which again is another version of display advertising, but you pay for every acquisition through the site as opposed to each click through the ad.

There are pros and cons to each type of display advertising but the overall question is what would you use.
Well, I would always start with search because this drives the interest. If someone is looking for beech shelving units. Where would you go? Clearly to a dominant search engine, Google most likely. Display advertising would not feature greatly unless you have the money to invest in your brand or product building. However, if you were setting up a business on a new business idea that no-one knows of then you are best to use display to build up awareness.

The benefits of display are clear. Display advertising drives 3 times more reach than PPC ads. However PPC and SEO drive 3 times more lift (i.e. revenue or enquiries).

You want to be successful, you have to do both display and PPC in the long run.

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