I received a Google Alert this morning about a site that was referenced my Search Engine Marketing Inc. book.
As you would expect, I went there and it was a standard scrapped site with the reviews all neatly listed on the page clearly hoping to make some cash off the four sets of AdSense ads on the page.
I encounter this type of site half-dozen times a week and if it sells books then I guess am fine with it. However, what intrigued me in this case was the actual AdSense ads that were on the page – all for DUI and Drunk Driving legal support.
Following all of the reviews of the book and the table of contents were the footer ads
Why is this happening? Possible scenarios:
- Option 1 – Search Marketers are drunks? Anyone who has been to the after-hours parties of a search conference knows that the search community can put down some alcohol – however, they typically stay at the hotel and don’t drive – can’t vouch for that they do at home though.
- Option 2 – My book drives you to drink? The 695 pages of top notch content of Search Engine Marketing Inc can make your head spin and alert you to how poorly your campaign is being managed resulting in a desire to drink away your sorrows?
- Option 3 – Broad Match Targeting – It appears that ALL of these campaigns have the phrase “drunk driving” set on broad match and come up for the keyword “driving” as in “driving search traffic to your company’s website” which is the tag line for the book.
Answer: Option 3 – it could be all but most likely it is because of the broad matching on the phrase.
This is one of the reasons many marketers become disillusioned with the content network because the ads are poorly written and even more poorly targeted especially when they use broad match. I ranted about delivering on the promise and wasted opportunity this over on the book site a few weeks ago.
If these ads are working for the DUI lawyers then great – continue running them as broad match. Maybe because I am still jaded from the dot com boom and people believing that just because person x is interested in y then they will jump at the chance to buy from us.
I strongly recommend that advertisers look at some of the sites on the content network and see if their ads show up in the right context or remote relevance.