Session Based Broad Match in the WSJ

ClickEquations Blog

A Serious Look at Paid Search Marketing Strategies, Tactics & Tools

By ClickEquations | January 12, 2011

Did you ever notice that every time you have first hand knowledge of anything written about in the press it’s clear that the largely or completely misrepresent the facts or misunderstand the issue?

Today the venerable Wall Street Journal wrote an article about session-based broad match and manage to entirely miss what should be the core point of the article.

Session-based broad match is an AdWords ‘feature’ that considers the past search queries of any users when deciding which ads to serve for them. So if someone does a search for ‘rental palace in Monaco’ and then does a search for ‘cheap dog toothbrush’ Google may decide to show an add your ran against the keyword ‘luxury Monaco rentals’ in reply to their toothbrush query.

The theory, which is reasonable, is that Google knows that user was very recently interested in those rentals. Why not show them the ad a few minutes later? That’s still relevant.

Missing The Point

In The Journal article they find advertisers who are not happy about paying for clicks unrelated to the users current query. They also find folks (like PPC RockStar himself David Szetela) who don’t mind and have had good experiences with the feature.

They then ramble on and back and forth about if what Google is doing is cool or uncool.

The 500lb gorilla never makes an appearance.

Why isn’t ‘Session-based Broad Match’ a user controlled option?

The article doesn’t even introduce the idea that the ‘solution’ to the grand question of ‘is it good’ or ‘should people pay for it’ is ‘let them decide’.

Perhaps in the Murdock tradition the WSJ now operates with the goal of only exploiting problems and not wasting any breadth (or ink) on solving them.

Make It An Option

At minimum Session-Based Broad Match should be an opt-in campaign-level feature. Or better yet there should be an option to bid differently for session-based impressions.

The problem isn’t the feature. The problem is that as an AdWords advertiser you don’t get to choose whether or not you use it. Google decides to show your ad and bill you for the click in a way most people didn’t intend, don’t understand, and may have valid opinions or business reasons to want or not want.

Bundling session-based broad match without offering any control reduces advertiser control and transparency – session based clicks are reported as such in one report but are generally hard to detect so many don’t know when they’ve happened.

In my experience the vast majority of advertisers are surprised when they first hear this ‘feature’ even exists. Few know they they’re paying for it, most likely in very small amounts but on a regular basis. That’s no way to treat your customers.

AdWords added many great and complex features this past year, and extended advertiser control with things like Modified Broad Match. They have the resources and capability to make Session-Based Broad Match an option.

And they should.

http://twitter.com/DenboTaylor Dennis Taylor

Great post, we were at odds whether we liked or disliked this feature, whether an adword appearing due to seachers past behaviour was relevant and what would it cost? We’re still not in agreement but if google allowed us to disable this feature at least we could run split tests to see if switching off affected traffic and conversions.
http://www.web-media.co.uk Rob Willox

The theory that Google knows what the searcher is interested in during a session could be regarded as reasonable and in some cases may be, resulting in a converted clickthrough but the option should be in the control of the advertiser not at the behest of Google.nnGiven how ubiquitous many consider Google to be, the example searches given for a Monaco Palace and a dog toothbrush, would surely be that unrelated that even Google can see the disparity between them. nnWith a closer related type of search it could just be considered reasonable in terms of attracting a click whereas with the example, another Monaco ad could very well be wasting valuable page real estate displaying a completely unrelated ad unless, of course, having clicked-through and booked a Monaco palace the searcher is now looking for somewhere in Monaco to buy a toothbrush for their pet!
http://www.instinctmarketing.com Brian Broadbent

I see an entirely different angle from this article. The real issue is that the small advertisers (cosmetic dentists of the world) don’t track their performance from AdWords. So you really canceled because of a few erroneous clicks? Really. I agree that the feature is a net negative for most, but if you have a positive ROI from Google it’s just a cost of doing business.
Anonymous

Craig, nnWhat will making the search term query (found in “see search terms”) that is posted as a session-based broad match a negative keyword do? Will this reduced future session-based broad matches in this direction?
http://www.RecalledMedications.com/ Chris Nielsen

YES! Exactly my thought. The “feature” may or may not work, but debating with Google on my they would show “non-relevent” ads to a user is pointless. This is called “remarketing” and happens when you search for a specific thing on one site and then go to a different site that has nothing on the same topic, yet you see ads for the previous topic.nnWaste of money aside (but should it really be ignored?) if the benefits are not 100% positive and if people complain (Since last year I now see from my research) why would you not make it optional as they used to do with the “Expanded search” or whatever it was called in the past. That’s gone now and I don’t know if it’s a default or not. That’s a different issue.

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