Paid search is often touted as the perfect advertising medium, in which ads appear only for those individuals who are actually searching for the advertiser’s product right at that moment. However, while clever search engine technology goes a long way towards achieving this ideal, the “match made in heaven” of paid search depends on the search engine’s ability to determine exactly what the user wants and exactly what the advertiser is offering. A failure on either end is likely to result in an unqualified ad impression, when the ad appears for a user whose query is not actually related to the advertiser’s product. It may also result in an unqualified click, when the user clicks on one of these inappropriate ads anyway. This wastes the advertiser budget and frustrates the user, yet it is a remarkably common occurrence. In this article I explain how the language-savvy paid search advertiser can take advantage of the full range of paid search keyphrase matching options in order to avoid unqualified impressions and clicks, and thus maximize ROI.
Continue reading ‘Who is clicking on your paid search ads, and what were they actually searching for?’
Archive for July, 2006
