Yea, Adwords can be a SERIOUS pain in the ass with their automated bans and slaps, but I gotta say they’re ALWAYS adding AWESOME new features.
Check out the Search Funnel Analysis!
And the Retargeting.
Both serious game changers if you’re using Adwords.
Just got this via email:
Yahoo! continuously evaluates and prioritizes our products and services, in alignment with business goals and our continued commitment to deliver the best consumer and advertiser experiences. After conducting an extensive review of the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta program, we have decided to close the program effective April 30, 2010. We expect to deliver final publisher payments for the month ending April 30, 2010 to publishers no later than May 31, 2010. All publishers eligible for 1099s for the 2010 tax year will have those mailed by January 31, 2011.
Because our content will no longer be delivered to your ad unit spaces after April 30, 2010, we recommend removing all YPN ad code from your pages by that date.
For the opportunity to continue earning revenue, we suggest using Chitika, a leading advertising network that syndicates Yahoo! Content Match and Sponsored Search ads. Chitika has set up a special process for YPNO beta publishers to participate in its platform. Click here for more information.
Sad to see Yahoo! either bowing out from and/or outsourcing so many of their businesses. Given Yahoo!’s huge reach as a publisher and the idea behind audience matching at the likes of Quantcast, Yahoo! should have been fairly well positioned to run a distributed ad network. But since they sold off search they just keep cutting pieces. I would have thought that running a contextual network would have been additional free volume Yahoo! made while creating optimization algorithms for their own properties.
Given their pending tie-in with Microsoft, it is a bit surprising to see them recommending Chitika (though the recommendation is a nice win for Chitika). Part of selling the search tie up deal with Microsoft was the idea of economies of scale driving increased yields. And now AdSense (which is already probably at least as dominant in contextual ads as Google is in search) just lost another competitor. For as saturated as online ad networks are, it is surprising that AdSense has such a big lead and that Microsoft didn’t make catching up with PubCenter a higher priority.
Creating a distributed ad network would give Microsoft 5 big weapons in the search game
One strategic positive for Yahoo! is that they have pushing harder into the original content development, but if they become more profitable with that will some of their content licensing partners start increasing their rates?
And if there is any sorta sustainable economic rebound (doubtful), then I would give it 2 to 1 odds that Yahoo! buys Chitika in the next 3 years 
A lot of PPC advice is focused around direct marketing strategy i.e. you identify an audience and deliver them what they want. You convert at rate X. Repeat.
For the most part, this works well. However, you may be missing an opportunity to spread your message to a wider audience, and this benefit could come free.
Try to make your offer truly remarkable. Is your offer worth remarking upon? If not, could it be twisted so it could be, or put in a form that makes it easy to repeat?
Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable is a book by Seth Godin. The central theme is that offering me-too products and services is boring. Such goods and services won’t be remarked upon. Since we live in a world of saturated media, to be unremarkable is to go un-noticed. To not be noticed is the death of a business. If you haven’t read the book, I suggest you do – it’s a great read, and it’s short and to the the point.
The lesson of being remarkable translates well online. Online marketers have picked up on it, using remarkable qualities of a message, or format of that message, to help ensure a message gets spread.
The same tactic can be used in PPC.
Take a look at your competitors landing pages. Do any of them stand out? Do they stand out in the sense that the message would be worth you repeating to someone else?
That quality of being remarkable, or being repeatable, is a valuable marketing tool. Sometimes, all it takes to become remarkable is to twist your existing message into something unexpected. Like turning a typical cow into a purple-colored cow. It’s still a cow, but the way it appears makes it stand out.
However, this isn’t just a cosmetic concept. Not only should you have a remarkable angle, but it’s best if you also need a remarkable, unique product or service.
If this sounds familiar, it is – it’s a riff on the old concept of a unique selling point.
The unique selling point has three specific components:
The modern twist is that your message should also be repeatable. People should want to spread your message, and be able to do so easily. The benefit is that your message reaches a wider audience than it otherwise would.
Obviously, this will not suit every product or service. For example, it’s hard to imagine toilet paper ever being truly remarkable, and being unremarkable has hardly affected toilet paper sales!
However, it’s an interesting way to think about what you do. Is there some aspect to your service that you can twist in order to make remarkable and memorable? Could you promote it in such a way that people will be “forced” to remark upon it? For example, you could use a quirky YouTube video on your landing page and encourage people to embed it in their site.
There’s no reason your landing pages can’t have a viral component to them that encourage people to remark on your product of service.
You have people’s attention – you paid for the click – and you still need to convert people to a desired action. One of those desired actions could be to have people run with your message and repeat it in other channels. You could embed social media components, like video and Facebook groups, that facilitate people repeating or remarking upon your message.
The pay off is that you create attention in other channels, and if the message does go viral, then you get a whole lot of extra marketing value for free.
Who is going to pay to tell people that they are good enough and their lives are fine as they are? A fundamental truth of advertising is that advertising the truth usually isn't very profitable - which is why there is lead generation, affiliate programs, public relations, negative billing options, small print, bogus medical research, and so on... ;)
Ever wonder how an SEO professional can charge first world rates to do do third rate, third world work and still get a top rating from a heavily advertised SEO rating website? Edward Lewis has the lowdown on Top SEOs, including TopSEOs complaints.
A big part of the problem with the affiliate business model is when people offer fake rankings / ratings and only promote whoever pays them the most. The person/company which can afford to pay the most for leads often can only afford to because there is hidden risk or hidden cost in the service, or because they don't deliver on their promises. An analogy here is those AAA rated mortgage backed securities where an S&P employee explained, "We rate every deal. It could be structured by cows and we would rate it."
The biggest brands don't pay as much per lead because they don't have to. They invest in brand and quality of customer service. The best service-based companies don't need to pay cut-rate ad prices to advertise. The best SEO companies have far more demand for their time than time to pay to hunt for customers.
I remember back in 2006 when one of the currently "top rated SEOs" did work for my wife's website (before she met me). That SEO firm did nothing but outsource overseas irrelevant reciprocal link exchanges and her website *would not rank* for any semi-competitive keywords until *after* the reciprocal links page was removed from her site. After we took down those reciprocal links and built some quality links the site started to rank. We changed the FTP details as well because that guy's services were not only not worth paying for...the reciprocal links were proved to be damaging, and we didn't want him to put them back up. And in spite of not doing any services for months (and certainly no services worth paying for), this person wanted ensure they got paid for 12 months of service. And they didn't want to let the contract end when it was supposed to either. They were all sales all the time.
What eventually stopped the credit card charges was when I wrote him via email "If her credit card is charged again we will be doing a reverse charge and a full writeup on the service."
He responded to that with the following:
I would watch your comments and threats my friend as you have no idea of what I am capable of or who I am - this is a small industry and if you are trying to be a an up an coming player in it this is not the way to do it by bashing your competition. A simple email professionally stating that you were unhappy with the service would have sufficed and I would have looked into to make sure Giovanna got what she paid for.
I have run 2 optimization companies and have been in this business for 12 years now. With my contacts at Google and the other main engines I can get your ebook website banned within 1-2 days if this is how you do business - with threats and slander - keep it up.
The funny thing is all I said was that if he tried charging again (past the contract) that we would reverse charges. And yet the sleazeball told me to "watch your comments and threats" and that he could use "contacts at Google and other main engines" to get my website banned. What a jerk.
I have always had contempt for blowhards, and for pure hard-sales salesmen who put sales first and are willfully ignorant of their trade and/or who are willing to sell garbage product without any concern for the customer's welfare.
I am grateful that the above mentioned person sucked at what they did & ripped people off back then. If they were not out scamming people and actually provided a useful service then my wife wouldn't have had a reason to contact me and meet me and marry me. ;)
I let it go for over 3 years, but if they are still scamming people then that needs to stop. I figure its only right that I write this post as a fair warning. All good things must come to an end. And so should bad things. Hopefully these clowns quite scamming people. Enough is enough.
A reader asks:
I purchased your Google Adwords book and on page 54 at the bottom, you said to "click the approx avg search volume header to sort by average monthly search volume, from greatest to least", but I don't see this option on google's keyword tool. Is there something else I can click on to get the same results?
My response:
I'm lying in bed with a wrenched lower back, so the keyword I gravitate toward is "low back pain." Next time someone asks me a keyword question, I hope I respond with an example more like "ultra-marathoning over 40" ;)
Here's how you do it in the new Google Keyword Tool:
1. Enter your keyword and get a table of results:
2. Next to "Sorted by" at the top right, click the drop-down menu that currently shows "Relevance".
You'll see the whole menu, and then you can select the sort field:
If you're doing keyword research, what do you do with all that research? How do you write compelling "Game Over" Ads based on all your insight and hard work?
Most instructions on market research tell you what to research and where to get the information, but now how to use that intel to create compelling marketing messages that make you the obvious choice to your ideal customers.
Camp Checkmate is the answer to that problem. Two days of high level workshop and mastermind, where you'll come away with your marketing done for you.
Read more: CampCheckmate.com
In the previous article, we talked about starting a PPC business, and a little about differentiating yourself from your competition. Let’s take a look at practical ways to do this.
Given that the PPC provider market is crowded, you first need to figure out a point of differentiation.
Points of differentiation include level of service, locality, knowledge of an industry, price, level of awareness, etc.
Take a look at your competition and work out what you can do better, or how you can slice up the market to find a niche you can own i.e. can you specialize in a vertical, like consumer shopping or travel, or focus on one particular region? If so, is there enough of a market to make such a specialization worthwhile? Estimating market size can be a little tricky, but look for relevant industry reports and studies to help you.
Why is differentiation important? Copying someone else’s approach leaves you at a disadvantage, because you’ll always be one step behind.
A developed, competitive market, like PPC, isn’t kind to late-comers offering very similar services, so it’s a better idea to find a point of differentiation and work it hard in order to carve out a name for yourself. Those who come after you might be able to ape your approach, but not your experience. So long as you keep adapting to your market, and refining your offer, you’ll always be one step ahead of the copyists.
It’s not enough just to be different, of course. Being different by charging ten times what the market is charging won’t result in any extra business, unless someone can demonstrate ten times the value. Therefore, be sure to link your point of difference to a genuine value proposition. Answer the question “Why should someone pick you, and not the other guy”?
Once you’ve decided on one or two points of difference that add real value, you next need to develop your message.
The message is a simple outline of what you do and the value you provide. It is also referred to as the elevator pitch in that it is short, succinct and to the point. It can be difficult to reduce your message to a clear paragraph, so here are a few tips on how to do it. One useful technique is to think of it in terms of questions and answers.
Ask, and answer, the following questions:
What value do you provide your customers?
This value has to be real, not imagined. For example, a provider might imagine a PPC customer values a traffic report hand delivered each month, but that might not be something real clients place any value upon. To find out what potential clients value, it pays to do a little market research. This could be as easy as attending marketing events and asking people questions about the frustrations they have with online marketing. Where there are frustrations, there is money to be made.
What problem do I solve?
If clients tell you their frustrations and problems, you can formulate solutions. It might sound simple, but often clients will pose their problems in the form of a solution, which can be a bit misleading. For example, I client might say “we really need some SEO!”. What the client probably needs is more web traffic, at a low cost, and of course, there are many ways to solve that particular problem, SEO being but one.
Blend the answers into a tight, focused two paragraph explanation of the problem you solve linked to the value you provide. It’s great if you can work in an explanation of why you’re the best person to provide this value.
For example:
“We are TravelClickMasters.com. We provide Pay Per Click services to the travel industry. Our services help travel companies boost visits to their web site, and increase booking rates. Typically, our clients have increased web site visits by over 300%, whilst lowering their overall PPC advertising costs, by using our specialized services. TravelClickMasters is run by Scott Jones, a marketer with 12 years experience in the travel industry”.
It won’t win any medals, but it’s a start 
Note how we’ve emphasized the value we provide to clients. It often pays to be explicit i.e. “increased web site visits by over 100%”, as opposed to general i.e. “increased web site visits” because increasing site visits by a nominal figure isn’t something that screams value.
The rest of your copy should expand and support your key message. For example, use before/after case studies that demonstrate the value you create, in this case showing increased traffic levels and booking numbers. Use testimonials. Outline your experience and knowledge of your niche.
Next, test your message out on friends and colleagues. Are they crystal clear about what you do and the benefits your provide?
Note any word or term that causes confusion. For example, “Pay Per Click” is industry jargon. It is suitable to use such a term for people who have had experience of pay per click marketing, but you’ll need to recraft the message for a general audience. Decide who is the most likely audience for your website, and craft the message accordingly.
Your web design needs to sync with your message.
First impressions really do count on the web. A study of website credibility factors found that people judged a websites credibility not by privacy policies, security, etc, but by how the website appeared. People will read further if your website looks and feels right.
Use the message as a key part of the the design brief. Web designers appreciate this detail, and will incorporate it into the design.
For example, if your brand is upmarket, then the website should look glossy. The same glossy design will not work for a brand based around low prices. The message would be mixed, and wouldn’t ring true.
The way you answer the phone, the way you write emails, the way you present yourself should all support the message. If you specialize in, say, travel, you should be talking travel. You should use industry jargon and touch on industry issues.
So, the message is not just something you write on a webpage. It’s something you become. Going through this exercise is a great way of figuring out what it is you really want to become.
We recently reviewed a bunch of competitive research tools, and in that spirit I thought it would be a good idea to review Alexa. It is not that Alexa is the #1 service available, but they do provide one of the better services while being free. Every few years it seems they fall behind and become a bit of a relic, and then every few years they catch up.
Recently when using Alexa I saw they added a good number of features, so I thought it would be worth doing a run down.
What Alexa is most popular for - their traffic rank, is popular because it has been around for a long time and is well referenced. I don't consider it to be a high value tool in terms of accuracy though. I think all these traffic estimation tools have a big margin for error, and its easy to read too much into the base/core number. Having mentioned that, you can try to use traffic data from Alexa, Google Website Trends / DoubleClick Ad Planner, Compete.com, and Quantcast to try to see how well they agree in terms of the traffic volume of a site or the relative volume between multiple sites in the same vertical.
In spite of my lack of faith in the Alexa rank numbers some people do put weight on it. Some investors use it. And when Markus Friend was launching PlentyOfFish he redirected Alexa users away from his site to stay below radar until his site was strong.
This is a good hint at how compelling people find a particular website. Sites which are driven by arbitrage efforts typically are not very engaging, hoping to either sell something right away or get people off the site. They also offer a time on site feature which you can use to compare how sticky sites are.
This is basically a flip of the above...people who see 1 page and then are gone. You can see in the yellow area where we tested using a pop up. While the pop up did get more people to register on our site, we dropped the pop up because it was somewhat inconsistent with the rest of our marketing (our core audience of customers tends to tilt torward the expert end) and the types of people who were receptive to pop ups were not as good of a longterm fit for our site as customers.
Who are they sending traffic to? Where do their visitors go after leaving the site?
Who is sending them traffic? In many ways this can be unsurprising, but certain sites end up being more or less dependent on social media due to certain things like if they appeal to younger or older customers, what they are doing offline, if they are producing linkbait relevant to a specific audience which is heavily integrated into social media.
This can also help you locate some advertising locations, figure out how reliant they are on search, and help you see which sites in the vertical they are closely aligned with. DoubleClick Ad Planner also has a pretty awesome traffic affinity feature.
This shows the percentage of their traffic which comes from search engines. If it is abnormally high, that might mean the site has a search-heavy focus and needs some thickening out in terms of community participation and developing other traffic streams. If it is abnormally low, and you have similar link profiles to other sites that are higher, then it might mean that you are missing some important keywords that you should target. This is where digging in for more data with a tool like SEM Rush or Compete.com shines.
Do they have a membership area to their site? If they host it on a subdomain you can see how active they are. Having anywhere near 5% or 10% of your traffic in the private member's area is quite good if you have a well connected high traffic website. You can also see that our tools subdomain is a quite popular section of our site.
You can use this to find some of the most important keywords for a competing site. If some of your best keywords are being revealed it might make sense to publish some filler content on a popular topic that is hard to monetize so that it better shields some of your best keywords from free public viewing.
If you install the Alexa toolbar they will also show you a bit more query data and list some opportunities for that site on the paid search front.
You can see what countries a particular site is popular in.
And you can get more detailed demographic data on a per site basis.
Many sites within the same field will have fairly similar demographic targets, but even things like at work vs at home can indicate if the site is primarily targeting independent types or corporate types. When compared against the above, notice how (generally) SeoMoz has a fairly similar audience composition:
They skew a bit younger (I think sometimes my cynical nature turns off some young pople), a bit more college educated (they go to like 10x as many SEO conferences as I do), and we are perhaps a bit more popular with self employed people. And then for Search Engine Land you can see that they have a similar profile to SEO Moz, but with even more people at work and more college educated people.
And then you have sites which are extreme demographic outliers. Ever wonder who the customers are for those websites primarily marketed through hyped up email launch sequences by affiliates?
Well throw some of those sites into Alexa, and you will find that for many of those sites it appears the target market is: old desperate and gullible men from the US who failed at life, still don't have a good b/s meter, and want to believe there is a silver bullet they can use now to automatically generate wealth. They can't, of course, but there is a crew that will sell them that story and get rich by working over the remaining crumbs in their retirement accounts.
I am betting that part of why our age distribution is a bit more flat than most other SEO sites is because we offer free tools which are recommended to some of the audiences that buy the launch product stuff (or, that is my theory, based on some of them left their member's areas not password protected and sent a bunch of traffic at our site).
How do your demographic profiles compare to other sites in your space? Have you checked out all the features Alexa has added? What do you think of them?
Thinking of setting up a business providing PPC campaign management services?
Let’s presume you’ve got your PPC chops, have built up some practical experience and are now looking to make money out of your skills.
Let’s take a look at how to go about it.
SEM spending is estimated to be worth $18 billion by 2011.
Most activity, in terms of spend, in the professional search marketing space is in PPC, as opposed to SEO. The PPC concept is easy to grasp, implement and measure, and as more and more advertising spending shifts online, it will undoubtedly find it’s way into PPC.
It seems a strange question, but there is a big difference between knowing how to do PPC and setting up a business to sell that service to clients.
When you start a business, you typically have to perform most of the varied business functions yourself. That means writing proposals, attending conferences, pitching presentations, cold-calling, selling and networking. All of these activities cost time and money and none of it is guaranteed to pay off. Once you do land work, you need to run the campaigns whilst searching for the next customer.
That’s the reality of most service-based start-ups. Your hourly wage must reflect that you are likely going to spend 50% of your time working on prospecting, learning, networking, and dealing with administrative issues. Ask yourself if you’d like to “do it all”, or would you be happier selling your skills to a business that is already established, so you can focus exclusively on PPC?
Most inhouse PPC managers with three years experience earn between $30-70K. If you have five or more years experience, that figure shifts up a gear, typically ranging from 50K to, in some cases, $200K (rare – but some people are doing that, and above).
When you’re doing your break even calculations – more on this shortly – keep these figures in mind. The effort involved in running your own business must pay off in relation to what you can earn somewhere else, unless monetary reward is not your sole aim. And an in-house job can gain you experience, help you build your network, and help gain exposure for your expertise.
If you’ve decided that your suited to running your own business, the first thing to do is run a few numbers.
One of the most important aspects of start-up bsuiness is cash flow.
Do you have sufficient cash reserves to live on while you’re waiting for your first client to pay up? Cash flow can kill a small business, even those businesses which have a a lot of prospective work in the pipeline. The bills will come in, and your clients may not have paid you yet. Without access to a line of credit or savings, cash flow issues can take you out very quickly. It’s a good rule of thumb to assume you’ll make a loss, or break even, in the first year, so make sure your finances can cope.
Next, you need a break-even analysis. A break-even analysis shows you the amount of revenue you’ll need to bring in to cover your expenses, before you make a profit.
A simple equation like this will show you how many sales you need to make in order to run your business successfully. It will also give you an idea of what you need to charge for your services.
It should only take you a few hours to make the numbers work, or to see that they don’t stack up. If they do work, then you can go ahead and form a business plan. If you can’t make the numbers work, then you’ve saved yourself a lot of time, money and effort creating a business that can’t possibly survive.
It doesn’t sound like much fun, I know, but business really does come down to a set of numbers. You either sell something for more than it costs to produce, or you don’t.
Try searching for PPC management services. As you can see, the world isn’t short of providers!
In an industry with such a low barrier to entry, how will you stand out from all the rest? You’ll need to give prospective clients a good reason why your service is better than the others on offer. How do you intend to match or better the credentials of established operators? How can you differentiate your service? Can you do it by geography? Price? Service levels? Performance? Focus on a business vertical / niche where you have established expertise?
Think about how you can pitch your services so they demonstrate real value to a client. If they can do PPC in-house, they will – so you can’t just sell the benefits of PPC in general- , you need to give them great reasons to outsource to you. What advantage do you provide over doing the work inhouse?
One strategy often used by those starting out is to undercut everyone else. Whilst it can be useful to get a cash flow going, there are problems with this approach.
Once you hook someone into a low price, they’ll come to expect it. And then they may ask for discounts too! A better way is to give someone a low price, but make sure they know this is a discounted price on your usual service. Why would you give someone a low price? This can be a useful tactic for building good references, recommendations and a client history. The advantage to you is that you gain marketing collateral and professional experience, and get paid.
Long-term under pricing isn’t a great strategy unless, like WalMart, you can do a lot of volume with low overhead by dictating the terms of the supply chain. But you are not WalMart (or Google), and you don’t have that pricing power. This creates problems in itself, especially for the start-up PPC business, as you need a management structure and personnel do deal with high volumes. If you can do high volumes at good prices, great! Ask yourself how you’ll manage to scale quickly – in terms of taking on extra staff and moving to bigger premises- if this happens. But beware that some of the easiest set and forget PPC models have a high churn rate, and Google has done beta tests that aim to service the low end of the market via automated technologies.
You also can’t price too far above the market, unless you’re bringing something truly unique to the market that clients can’t get elsewhere – additional exposure on other key properties, press coverage, organic search traffic, a strong focus on improving conversion rates, a business model where you absorb most the risk but keep a bigger share of the profits, etc.
Take a long hard look at the existing PPC service market and try to imagine what is not there. Could reporting be better? Could you add value by focusing on achieving increased conversion i.e. getting involved more deeply with a clients business strategy? Could you specialize in one particular market, like say travel, and become very well known in that market segment?
Often, larger PPC management campaigns are based on a percentage client spend, with some form of retainer for reporting. If you do get paid a percent of spend, it helps to focus where the click volume is decent and clicks are expensive. Legal and hotels are typically far more lucrative than a local shoe repair shop. 
Smaller campaigns tend to be a fixed price for establishment, with on-going retainers. When deciding on how to price, look at what your competition are doing, and consult industry research and surveys. While recurring income sounds compelling (we always add up the income before thinking of the costs), if you under-price the cost of maintaining the relationship (as well as the PPC account) then that passive income can easily start flowing in the wrong direction, and end up as a passive expense. A well executed one off deal can be far more lucrative than an under-priced ongoing relationship. If a relationship consistently loses money consider firing the client and spending more time improving the performance on your best accounts.
What are some of the business lessons you learned the hard way? If you were to start a PPC consulting business from scratch today what would you do differently than you did when you first started?
Quick heads-up: Registration is now open for Camp Checkmate Chicago, June 10-11, 2010. Two days of intense "Playshops" (fun workshops), quality time with me, Perry Marshall, and Glenn Livingston. Click to find out more (opens in a new window so you can keep learning about the Search Funnel Report on this page).
And now to the Search Funnel Report. Here's what Google has to say about it:
In a nutshell, here's the problem that the Search Funnel Report solves:
You run a keyword report and discover that a certain broad keyword gets lots of impressions, many clicks, and no conversions.
So you delete the keyword.
Then, next month, you realize that your sales are down, even for keywords that had done really well before. Keywords that weren't even in the same ad group or campaign as the one you deleted. Not only conversions, but clicks as well.
What the…?
Suppose you walk into your favorite diner tomorrow morning, go up to the counter and tell the short order cook, "I'll have the usual." Eight minutes later, you get the tall stack of banana pecan pancakes, three slices of bacon, wheat toast with orange marmalade, and a pot of English Breakfast tea.
Next week, you're traveling on business to an unfamiliar city. You find a diner that looks just like your favorite one, walk in, go up to the counter, and tell the short order cook, "I'll have the usual." The cook looks at you like you have three heads.
Obviously, the words "I'll have the usual" don't have any magic power. They work at your diner only because of numerous previous interactions with the cook. They don't work where the same history isn't in place.
Your best converting keyword may be a version of "I'll have the usual." Suppose you sell digital cameras. Your money keyword might be "PowerShot 780SD". That's the click that brings the customer ready to buy.
But suppose customers will buy from you only if they already have a history with you. Suppose they have to start buy searching for "digital camera" and then find your store. They don't buy, but they spend time looking.
A couple days later, they search for "Canon cameras", based on information they got when they were on your site. They see your ad, but go instead to an organic listing that reviews Canon cameras.
The following week, they search for "PowerShot 780SD" as the camera they want, and they see your ad, click it, and place an order.
Until now, Google would tell you only that the keyword "PowerShot 780SD" led to a sale, and the keyword "digital camera" brought a bunch of tire kickers who never bought anything.
Based on that data, you might have deleted "digital camera" as an ROI-negative keyword, and never realized that keyword was an indispensable early stepping stone on the conversion path.
Conversion tracking just got 300% more complicated. That's good news if you're willing to spend the time to understand and engage the new complexity. And bad news for those advertisers who would rather not pay attention to results, and just let Google optimize everything for them.
Of course, you can always hire an ROI-obsessed AdWords management agency to do this for you. (If you've been burned by agencies before, I feel your pain. Check out the agency that Kristie McDonald and I started in November: ThePPCagency.com.)
Ask has removed referral data from many of their ads, leaving advertisers flying blind. Ask.com, which has long been known as one of the leading Google AdWords arbitrage plays, also syndicated their ad feed to the point where Google forced them to turn off syndication. From there Ask has look for new ways to arbitrage search. They have created an automated deals section...
Which has over a million pages indexed in Google!
And the Ask.com search results themselves are a bit rough. Some of them promote featured articles from other IAC parners
Many of them have Ask.com answers in them, which scrapes questions and answers from across the web and wraps them in ads.
And some of the search results have multiple lead generation boxes on them (without any disclosure).
A good chunk of them have Wikipedia listed, but wrapped in ads & hosted by Ask.
A few more vertical ad types and/or general purpose web services (to complement answers, news, local, lead generation, Wikipedia, FreeBases, PPC ads) and a search engine would have no need to send searchers anywhere but to advertisers and itself.
I have no doubt that Ask's search results monetize at a higher rate than Google's, but that aggressive monetization also costs them marketshare. It is a trade off every business faces: maximizing short term yield, while keeping the business healthy and growing in the market.
Given that Google has been testing lead generation AdWords ads, pushing maps hard (while testing ads in the maps results - along with beta tests in big money categories like hotels), paid inclusion in their product search, and product images in the organic search results ... it wouldn't be surprising to see Google clone whatever looks like it is working good for Ask.
But Google will have to move slower on many of these fronts, because if they move too quickly they won't be able to defuse the blowback and anti-trust concerns. Given their recent user privacy snafu, and the current brand ad push where they are now trying to promote the categories they once claimed to have hate, the last thing they want to do is give people more reasons to distrust them and give regulators more reasons to give them another look. So new features launch as a limited beta test / experiment to a subset of users (and in many cases free to advertisers) to slowly release their business plans in a way that does not create too much concern. Small steps bring limited regulatory interference, and by the time concerns are voiced they can say "we have done that for years."
But as the Microsoft (or Wal-Mart) of the web, I wonder if it is a good idea for Google to make blog posts with titles like Now it's easy to switch to Google Apps from Microsoft® Exchange. The broader they spread search, the more likely they are to find their words working against them at some point. They can't claim to be agnostic while self serving ads and writing how to guides on switching away from competitors.