Beware. Google recently sent a notice to their advertisers stating they will start cracking down on the display url in the creative...What? Why would they need to crack down on the display url? Isn’t the display url a company’s website or a landing page?

Well, no. For many advertisers, especially the advanced search marketers, the display url is a vital piece of real estate in a creative arsenal. Common utilizations of a display url are:

 So what’s the purpose of using these tactics and what are the desired outcomes advertisers are trying to achieve?

(1)    Improve Effective Reach (Commonly referred to as increasing click-through rate): If a user types in a keyword and your advertisement is displayed as a result, you are credited with 1 impression. Therefore if you receive 100 impressions, you might think you’ve reached 100 prospects. Not so fast. In search marketing, it has yet to be proven the impression has value. In order to acquire value from the impression, you as a search marketer must acquire the click, providing what I refer to as Effective Reach. Your Effective Reach is the number of potential customers that are actually exposed not only to your creative, but also your landing page. By using the display url to better break through the clutter and gain the attention of the market, you can and often will improve your CTR.

(2)    Improve Quality Score: No longer do we operate in a direct bid for placement ecosystem, the quality score/relevancy plays a very critical role. The higher the CTR, the better the quality score/ad rank/relevancy will be.

(3)    Differentiation: Improving CTR and Quality Score are the normal desires of the masses. However, some advertisers are starting to differentiate their product/offering from the market by using the display url to accentuate a critical unique selling proposition ( i.e. Free Shipping, Low Price Guarantee, etc.)

(4)    Specialization: In many markets, the users respond more favorably to a vertical specialist better then a generalist.  For example, if you’re hunting for car parts for your 1985 BWM, which url would you rather click on...(a) www.xyzstore.com or  www.1985bmwcarparts.com?

If you are using the display url as part of your creative arsenal, congratulations. If not, it’s time to get started. However, with Google’s new display url crackdown, your destination url will actually need to match the display url. This will take a little more work, but if it provides increased reach, better quality scores, clearer differentiation or perceived specialization, then its probably worth it… Good Luck!