Pros and Cons of Contextual Paid Search Ads

You may...may not be aware of the ability to place your Google Paid Search (PPC) ads contextually i.e. in places where there is a relationship between the website content where the ad will feature and the content of the ad itself. This service has come on leaps and bounds just recently and advertisers are now able to also select certain social networks where the ad can be considered for placement, such as LinkedIn.

All this sounds quite clever, and on the surface it is, but there are a number of things to consider before you dive in. This applies to both advertisers and site owners allowing for contextual ads (a bit like this blog). We've listed, what we feel, are some key points for advertisers and site owners to be aware of and we hope you find them of interest.

Advertisers:

1. You will gain coverage in specific areas of the web relevant to the content of your ad.
2. You'll potentially appear in front a more targeted audience.
3. Ensure the content of the ad is as specific as possible and not ambiguous. Your quality score due to bounce rate could otherwise suffer.
4. You're under the complete control of Google. If they think you're relevant they'll place you.
5. If your competitors have "opted in" to display ads you may very well start appearing on their site.
6. Being displayed in social networks and social media in an advertising manner may very well work against you if your ad is poorly written. (Better to join in the conversation adding value; rather than gatecrashing and broadcasting yourself.)
7. Think about related topics where you could help the audience; you may achieve clearer visibility and be seen to be unique and increase the level of attraction.

Website Owners:

1. You are providing more relevant content (assuming Google do their job properly) for your site visitors.
2. If you are a business website; blog; your own social network; you are opening a window for your "competitors" to appear on your site.
3. You may make some money from click-throughs, however, consider the longer term value. Have you just provided you competitor with one of your potential customers?
4. Think extra specially hard about the content on your site (text, imagery, video etc.) and how it is all labelled and tagged. You may have some obscure references which could attract unwanted types of advertising. This can be interesting if you have a blog accepting uncensored comments, which may contain expletives.
5. 180 degree/antonym relevancy. A good example of this is a wildlife preservation website who had a feature on alligators and crocodiles to find they had adverts selling shoes and handbags suddenly appear next to the article. This can be avoided.
6. Think about the potential distraction and degradation of your site visitors' experience. If the risk is too high don't do it.

Of course, the main attraction for having ads on your site is to make some money from click throughs...which is why the web contains a number of "dodgy" affiliates and "misleading" review sites. They write content in such a way to specifically attract certain ads, but that is another story and Google is now much better at spotting these. However, if the monetary gain from having ads on your site is far out weighed by the potential of having a competitor take up valuable real estate on you page and pinching customers, then we'd advise against it.

As an experiment, we vehemently oppose the term "Social Media Marketing". It doesn't make sense and is born out of ignorance. See the "Art of Conversation" presentation for details. But as we have now added the term in this post and tagged it up accordingly, please take a look at the ads on this site...are there any numpties paying to advertise their "Social Media Marketing" skills? Or even worse, are there any that are talking about using social media for lead generation? Don't be misled.