Advertising is good way of getting people to visit your Web site. And pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, like what you see down the right-hand side of Google, is the best form of online advertising. It’s targetted, it’s manageable and it’s trackable – you can set a budget, see where your money has been spent and see how much you have earned from it. NICE. And at last AdWords has a competitor in the form of Microsoft adCenter – but is it any good?
Google AdWords is the main PPC game in town – Overture is expensive and (for us) has poor conversion rates, Miva’s a bit of a joke, and Mirago is a joke that’s not even funny. But now AdWords is facing better competition in the form of Microsoft’s annoyingly capitalised adCenter, and for once Microsoft is to be encouraged, because it’s not healthy for Google to be so dominant.
On the face of it, adCenter looks very smart and even has features that Google AdWords should think about copying.
What’s nifty about adCenter is that it has a very slick way of suggesting variants on the keyphrases we’re interested in bidding in. So for “sex toys” it would suggest we bid on “uk sex toys” or “online sex toys” as well. AdWords does something similar, but AdCenter’s seemed somehow easier to use and more controlable. Well done, well done.
I set up an account, funded it with £500 of a credit card and added a few test ads for LoveHoney, bidding for our adverts to appear when UK users of MSN Search typed in keywords such as “sex toys” and “vibrators”. Our ads would send them to the relevant sections of www.lovehoney.co.uk where people who were searching for “sex toys” could buy “sex toys.
A few hours later I received an e-mail from Microsoft adCentera telling me that the LoveHoney adverts had been banned. Why? Because they were advertising adult products, which was a contravention of the adCentercontent guidelines. Eh?
It simply doesn’t make any sense.
The adCenter system itself had suggested an enormous number of variations of adult keywords for us to bid on, but we were then banned from bidding on them. Doesn’t the left hand know what the right hand is doing? [Stop sniggering at the back.]
Here’s what Microsoft adCenter’s Content Guidelines say about adult content.
So even though somebody who searches for “sex toys” and who probably won’t be offended by seeing an advert for “sex toys” (in fact, they might be quite pleased), we are not allowed to advertise on those terms. (Aside: adCenter can tell you the age and sex of people who are searching for those terms… How does Microsoft find that out?)
And advertising on those adult search terms is not allowed even thought MSN Search’s natural search results contain thousands of links to sites on those subjects.
And while the sites that are advertising can be vetted for suitability, the sites that appear in the natural search results cannot be (unless Microsoft is gerrymandering its natural search results, in which case we should all be told) so searchers can potentially be exposed to much more hardcore material through the natural results than through an advert.
So the point of these Content Guidelines is to do what exactly? Protect searchers from material that might offend them? No, because the natural search results are there. Protect children from sexual material? No, ditto.
Protect Microsoft from accusations that it’s associated with adult companies? Quite probably. But then, if you were Microsoft, wouldn’t you rather be associated with LoveHoney through an advert for “sex toys” than the publishers of Wild Fuck Toys Vol.5 through your natural search results?
Apart from the fact that the policy is totally illogical, Microsoft’s implementation of it is haphazard and seemingly random. Our ads for the phrase “sex toys” were banned pretty much immediately, but 4 companies have been advertising on sex toys for more than a month.
I’ve spoken at length to Microsoft about it on the phone in the UK, and via e-mail in the US, but they’re either unwilling or unable (or probably both) to sort it out.
Ideally, Microsoft should sort out its bats-arse Content Guidelines and allow adverts from legitimate companies (us!). Google seems to be able to manage it OK without destroying the world’s morals, so why can’t Microsoft?
But if Microsoft can’t do that, the least it should be able to do is implement its own policy consistently and effectively. If not, what’s the point of having the policy in the first place?
As Napoleon Dynamite might say: “IDIOTS!”
In the meantime, back to AdWords…
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