As most of our clients know, I don’t like site-targeted ads.  I think that online advertising is less of a creative process, and more of a technical process in which millions of data points are analyzed and an optimum mix of of creative/pricing/placement is developed. That being said, I understand that sometimes you have to buy advertising on certain sites. So, we are happy with Google’s recent announcement that CPC site targeting (i.e. placement targeting) is officially live.

This features allows us to offer clients a chance to target a specific site, but retain the hallmarks of SEM campaign - no minimum spend, control of creative, control of flight dates, etc.

However, I wonder how top publishers will react to Placement Targeting and if they understand the implications for their business model. Google built AdSense on two principles: First, their technology will deliver highly targeted ads which will increase CTR and thus the advertiser’s satisfaction & publisher’s revenue. Second, the network was double blind in that publishers don’t choose advertisers and advertiser’s don’t choose sites.

Now, placement targeting rolls out of beta and voila, Google is THE rep for every site that uses AdSense. Forget your salesperson’s relationship with an advertiser or the years of working together. When that advertiser realizes that they can buy advertising on your site and pay per click, instead of per impression - they are GONE! And, anyone who thinks that Google isn’t wickedly clever, hasn’t followed the story. Here is how you own the online ad space.

1. Roll out *cheap* targeted text ads that convert very well and deliver top-notch results. (AdWords)
2. Take those same cheap targeted text ads and 100,000’s of advertisers and expand beyond your domain. Now, everyone can share in your windfall, except that they don’t know their % share. (AdSense)
3. Expand the advertising creatives available to advertisers from text ads to banner ads to video ads (AdSense Image Ads and Click-to-Play Video Ads)
4. Get rid of the double-blind nature of your ad exchange and give access to 100,000’s of sites, as your technology serving as the easiest and most cost-effective way to buy advertising - severely undercutting the CPMs on the publishers’ rate card.

This is very much a game changer and it will be interesting to see which sites opt-out of site targeting or worse, opt-out of AdSense. There is no doubt that this makes Google’s platform much more compelling for advertisers, and less compelling for publishers. As an advertiser focused agency, we’re ecstatic, but we realize that the power of the Google platform is that we can reach great sites like CNN. It would be a shame if this development drove quality sites out of the network.

Does anyone know if Google has agency discounts for US agencies? I know that they give a token promotional credit, but for an agency that manages a couple million dollars in advertising, that $100 promo coupon isn’t that exciting. The reason I ask is that they stopped doing it in Europe, and I wanted to double-check that they didn’t offer it in the US.

Yahoo! could start making some headway with an agency discount, I think that it would be a quick way to spur favor with agencies that don’t support them. Microsoft too. Currently, we don’t support Live because its hard to justify managing a 3rd-account to increase reach only marginally. You know what a game-changer would be? If Live launched a tool that grabbed your Google account, and recreated it perfectly in their system.

In any case, the article that spurred this is from a site called “SEM Report Card”, the story is here.

I have a major problem with Google playing high & mighty and scoring landing pages/sites and factoring that QualityScore into an advertiser’s minimum bid. Google has standardized the lion’s share of their advertising on a CPC-basis. The basic premise of a CPC pricing model is that an advertiser buys the visitor from Google, and are free to do with that visitor what they want.

I applaud Google for not allowing ads that link to pages with pop-ups, phishing sites, etc. They have certainly made the web a safer place to surf by imposing their limits. I was talking to a client about Google’s implied editorial endorsement. Your ad benefits from being in a box that says “Ads by Google”. Its a very easy way for Google to transfer some tiny bit of brand equity to your site. It says “Google has deemed your Ad good enough to run on our network”. Admit it, if Google opened a coffee shop or auto dealer in your town, it would immediately be the coolest lounge (for geeks) or the most fair car dealer. Everything Google touches turns to Gold.

However, with their post today on the AdWords blog, they are starting to show that its not about protecting their users (their “true north”), its about protecting their users for the right price. For me, this one line said it all “The following types of websites are likely to merit low landing page quality scores and may be difficult to advertise affordably”. You can still run your scams, you can’t just do it affordably. Or, read differently, we realize that your site is probably a scam, but we’ll still sell you a user if you pay us more.

If Google asked, and they have not, I would propose the following:

1. If you want to protect user experience, have a standard and stand by it. If its not good enough for Google, don’t run the ad, regardless of price. The user doesn’t know/care if Google charged $.10/click or $10.00/click.
2. If you are going to score websites, you should give them clear-cut guidelines on what you are looking for. If changes are made, allow them to see how that change affects their QualityScore either negatively or positively.
3. The min. bid could be high for a number of reasons, most are due to campaign set-up, structure, negative matching, ad text, etc. If those are the issue, fine. If its the landing page, alert us!
4. Come out with clear-cut details on how rich-media pages are scored. Is Flash positive for user-interaction? Is it a negative?

Would love to hear from other agencies out there - do you think that Google is being overreaching and under-informing?