Is Google Using Advertiser Information to Help Itself?
http://www.whizzbangsblog.com:80/content/view/307/1/
Quote: “”Being able to count the sales conversions and estimate the value of sales for each market vertical allows Google to be able to manipulate the traffic so that the advertiser’s conversions are just above the quality floor mentioned in a previous article on Quality.”"
***FS*** Michael is talking about the two sided shave. It takes traffic from publishers paying them subsistence level pay rates and it doles out just enough conversions on the advertiser side to keep the advertiser coming back for more, all while getting fat profits for itself in the middle.
More: “”Google can now calculate out which domain should send which traffic at which time so that the AVERAGE quality floor is never breached. It’s fine to send traffic that is below the quality floor as long as the average conversion rate is still above the AVERAGE quality floor for a particular advertiser. “”
It has always surprised me that Google can support record revenues each quarter while publisher partners indicate flat or declining revenues. Can’t blame Google for setting the rules in their sandbox, but it could be a lonely sandbox one day if the neighborhood kids go elsewhere to play.
I think my favorite quote from this article post belongs here also…go figure…lol
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“”Can’t blame Google for setting the rules in their sandbox, but it could be a lonely sandbox one day if the neighborhood kids go elsewhere to play.”"
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Gotta love this article and some of the quotes:
My FAVORITE QUOTE:
“”What’s to keep someone stuck on Google? “The moment someone proves themselves better than Google, people will switch in a heartbeat,” Srihari says. Just ask anyone who was at AltaVista in the late 1990s.””
http://www.sevenmile.com/2007-10/is-there-a-better-search-algo-than-googles/
Peace!
Dan
***FS*** I liked that too.
As an adwords buyer I resisted using their conversion tracking for years however their quality score mandate in the summer of 2006 essentially forced me to allow them to see my conversions. The arguement from my representative was that your pages are terrible so if we can’t see how well you convert our users then we will need you to pay $10.00 per click to make up for your low QS (my average keyword price was $2.75 at the time). That of course would have put me out of business.
Once I caved and allowed them to snoop on my conversions they allowed me to keep buying at or near my original keyword price.
I’m a GOOG shareholder and I am not big on govt intervention but it seems to me that selling one client a keyword at one price and another competing client the same keyword at a much higher price, based upon a “trade secret” calculation is simply price discrimination veiled as Quality Score. This more than likely violates the Robinson-Patman Act.
It is one thing to auction keywords to the highest bidder (old Overture model) and something entirely different to charge competing clients higher prices for the same product based on a supposed quality score (Google model after July 2006).
[…] is too low, Google will allow you to compete in the auction with reasonable ad pricing ONLY if you give them your conversion data: The arguement from my representative was that your pages are terrible so if we can’t see how […]
[…] is too low, Google will allow you to compete in the auction with reasonable ad pricing ONLY if you give them your conversion data: The arguement from my representative was that your pages are terrible so if we can’t see how […]