AdWords Archive

This evening during the Super Bowl, enterprise software provider Salesforce launched their first ads for Chatter, their Twitter-like instant messaging and private group chat function. The commercials featured an animated Black Eye Peas (hot off their pretty crappy halftime show) singer Will.i.am showing off how well he can communicate with his band mates using Chatter. Much like Leena Rao, I doubt the Black Eye Peas are customers of Chatter but maybe they are!

I was actually excited to see the Chatter commercials – but they weren’t what I was expecting. Show me a work team that is able to get more work done faster so they can have their weekends off to spend with their kids – that would have been emotion (like the Chrysler ad). Show me a manager who uses Chatter and has more free time to coach his or her team.

The Howard Development blog noticed that if you search on Google for the keyword Chatter, the ads that appear are, first a Salesforce ad and second, an ad for Chatter competitor Yammer.

You can see images from some of the ads below – here’s the text from the Yammer Chatter ads:

• No More Gimmicks – Choose real collaboration and build something special with your team.
• Better Than Chatter – Strengthen your collaboration with Yammer.
• Yammer Tops Chatter – See why Yammer is best for social networking w/ coworkers.
• Your Work Isn’t Trivial – Chatter: to talk rapidly or incessantly about trivial matter.

Online advertising optimization service YieldBuild has announced that they have removed the 3% fee and the service is now free for both new and current customers. YieldBuild noted regarding the change, “We have been very pleased with the performance gains that our publishers have been enjoying, and want YieldBuild’s ad revenue maximization solution to reach as many new publishers as possible.”

Earlier this year YieldBuild partnered with Microsoft pubCenter. YieldBuild also works with Google, Tribal Fusion, bluelithium and the Yahoo Publisher Network. The service works by configuring the ads to create the best possible performing combination of colors and other “visual formatting characteristics”.

Related: Interview with YieldBuild Founder and CEO Paul Edmondson

The fine folks at Web monitoring service Pingdom are out with their latest list. This time it’s Goole AdWords ads that have gone contextually wrong. From a new brain on eBay to visiting Hell with Kayak, these ads are a hoot.

Here are a couple of my favorites from the list:

Here we find that selling on eBay is like selling your soul – with all of the fees they charge and the PayPal fees, I guess it makes sense.

We already know that the Germans make the best knives (see latenight tv), now we know they make the best AdWords ads. I just love these ascii ads — too bad Google has banned them. I’ve watched that second car for hours and it never gets any closer to the car in front of it.

Yesterday Google started a beta test with their Adwords product with regards to PPA (Pay-per-action) advertising. Mike has an excellent overall recap of the service. I want to discuss my views on a couple of his points from a publisher standpoint.

Mike says… "Affiliate marketing networks like Commission Junction and LinkShare are screwed."

My belief is that CJ ruined themselves with their horrible signup process and poor customer service. But from this Google announcement, I have to disagree. Sure Google will pound on them like they P&G pound on everyone, but from what I can tell, from the publisher perspective, this will probably follow the other Adsense model which is: tell them nothing, pay them whatever and they will like it. Will publishers see what the PPA amount is? If so, there is nothing that says this on the blog post or FAQ.

Whether you use CJ, Jim Kukral's blog kits, or most other PPA ad options, you know how much you are going to make. 25c, 2% of sale, etc. If Google shows me what I am making before hand, that will certainly change things. If not, I am not sure publishers will be so willing to move to this. We already deal with the lower and lower earnings from Adsense.

Mike says… "And Yahoo is now in the unenviable position of playing follow the leader again, even as they catch their breath from the massive Panama release earlier this year."

Yep! Yahoo should have moved forward instead of moving closer. When you take one step forward, you are in reality not moving at all. Yahoo needs to innovate and the simple truth is that text ads are text ads – no matter how much fancy icing you put on them, they are still text ads to most advertisers.

Mike says… "Google also announced a new “text link format” ad unit today. They’ve crossed a hazy ethical line here. If this product was announced on its own, it would be heavily debated by the blogs and press."

Google notes the following in their FAQ… "For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a publisher’s recommendatory text: “Widgets are fun! I encourage all my friends to Buy a high-quality widget today.” (Mousing over the link will display “Ads by Google” to identify these as pay-per-action ads)."

Now correct me if I am wrong, but is this Payperpost or not? So Google is suggesting here that you make up good wording to "sell" the product. They don't even suggest you should try or test the product first. And their "disclosure" is only a mouseover. Everyone bitches and moans about PPP and their disclosure, yet this is ok? I am very confused. I agree with Mike about the ethical line. I just don't get why Google has been pushing and pushing lately.