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The Three Most Common SEM Ad Blunders of 2007

06/17/2008

By Michael Behrens, WebMetro Vice President of e-Marketing
As featured in the 2008 DMNews Essential Guide to Search Engine Marketing

One critical change search engines made in 2007 was a focus on transparency. Each major engine introduced reporting that shed light on what advertisers were buying. The three biggest advertiser mistakes, however, were based on their inability to take advantage of these insights.
Lack of domain level optimization
Yahoo and Google have syndication partners that display their sponsored results in exchange for some type of revenue sharing agreement. The key here is that not all syndication partners are created equal. Tracking the returns for all the specific domains for both search and contextual campaigns where an ad appears provides a clarity few advertisers take advantage of.

Not taking full advantage of content campaigns
All three of the major search engines provide the ability to target users based on the content they are consuming. In the early days of content advertising, it was virtually impossible to achieve an acceptable ROI. However, based on some recent changes, that is no longer the case. One major win for advertisers was the introduction of the Google Placement Performance Reports (PPR). These reports break down all the sites your ad appeared on and the corresponding costs. Far too many advertisers have shied away from content and have not taken advantage of the new exclusion features, site targeting and better pricing algorithms.

Bidding on non-performing search terms Google, Yahoo and MSN allow advertisers to bid on keywords using match types. For example, if you sell tennis shoes, you would presumably want to bid on the keyword “tennis shoes.” By selecting broad match, an advertiser could simply bid on tennis shoes and be displayed for all the variations of the term that search engines deem relevant. The problem is that search engines define the term “relevant,” and they are not basing their definition on your business. In 2007 we saw far too many businesses spend their ad dollars on search terms that provided zero tracked conversions due to lack of understanding surrounding broad/advanced match. The search engines are starting to provide rich insights into what you are being mapped to. If you do not use these tools, then you leave your ROI in the hands of the search engines. Search marketing is still new and is expected to continue evolving over the next several years. The biggest mistakes of 2007 were based on failures to adjust to changes made by the search engines. The good news is that some of the greatest wins were achieved by the early adopters. The choice is yours for 2008.

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