Famed adman David Oglivy is usually credited as having said: Half my advertising is wasted, the trouble is I dont know which half. In fact, it was actually John Wannamaker, considered the father of modern advertising.
No matter who said it, ROI (Return On Investment) or in Googlespeak, ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend) has long been the bane of marketers and advertisers alike.
Google was supposed to have solved that but according to ex-Google employee Adam Goldberg, responsible for the $500 million team behind Google Adwords, this may not in fact be the case. According to the ZDNet Digital Markets blog posting by Donna Bogatin, Google clients frustrated by unprofitable AdWords buys,
Goldberg says now, however, that on average online advertisers waste 30% of their budgets on unprofitable campaigns and they are frustrated.
Goldberg isn’t alone, Ice.com has gone on record with their frustrations, as has no less a company than Travelocity.
Does that mean we should all increase our hand-wringing quotient and decrease our marketing budgets? Not quite. And certainly Adam Goldberg doesn’t think so. In fact, a new company Clearsaleing.com, of which he is the “Chief Revenue Officer” seeks to do quite the opposite. Rather than giving up, he’s decided to monetize his core competency, Adwords, by helping clients increasing ROI.
Isn’t that what paid search or any search strategy for that matter is all about?
I’m guess he’s Adwords Qualified. I wonder if there’s an Adwords OverQualified designation.
The point here is a simple one, companies or professionals invested in search are an investment well worth making.
SHAMELESS PLUG - SEM and Paid Search is one of our core competencies.
Have a good one.
~ The (SEP) Guy
As posted in SEM, PPC, Opinion, Google.
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June 5th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Interesting. I stopped using adwords a while back because hits != sales and its not a long term payback, It runs and when its out of money your stuck unlike other forms.