Is Google Ads a customer-centric company? Well that depends who Google’s customer’s are.
The search engine, that now has many fingers in many pies, generates a massive amount of income from advertising revenue. So one way of looking at things is to say that companies that want to advertise on Google’s network, which includes Gmail and YouTube, are Google’s customers.
In a customer-centric world, Google would build its advertising products to deliver the best ROI possible, but recently, it seems that Google has tweaked its products to deliver the most revenue for itself at the expense of the best results for advertisers.
Go back to the last paragraph and note the word ‘seems’. This is not a criticism of Google, yet…
Instead, this is a cautionary tale to advertisers to NOT accept the recommended defaults or to trust the Google AI in all cases. It is also a reminder that understanding localisation can have a huge impact on performance.
Here is an example from our own experience at Aquitude.
eCommerce V Commerce
We run an Ecommerce Training Course in different cities around the world. The next course is in Melbourne Australia.
Globally, many ecommerce companies have dropped the ‘e’ off the front of e-Commerce. Platforms like Magento, Shopify and Salesforce now call their solutions variations of ‘Commerce Cloud’ etc.
While setting up Keywords in Google Ads, it was tempting to use a ‘Broad Match’ for the keyword Ecommerce Course. It was tempting to have a keyword ‘Commerce Course’ until we remembered that in Australia, the bachelor degree in which universities teach accounting, economics etc is called Commerce.
So ‘Commerce Course’ in Melbourne means something totally different. But Google’s AI doesn’t know that.
So while we are looking to sell to a small number of people, and we know that the search volumes are very low. That’s still who we want to advertise to, but – Google’s algorithms are desperate to spend our entire budget.
In other words, Google Ads is prioritising its revenue over our ROI. And it’s display network seems to be even worse.
Pro-Tip
Keywords are still massively important. One letter can make all the difference. In Melbourne, the difference between Ecommerce and Commerce is the difference between an 18 year old student choosing a career and a retail chain looking to change channel strategy.
Don’t just set and forget. Look at your Google Ads reporting and check which keywords your ads are being displayed for and if they are relevant. Don’t blindly trust the AI to get it right.