Is this the best or worst PPC ad?

Posted on Dec 7, 2008 in Marketing, Misc. | 0 comments

Yesterday I was testing ways to create an ICS file (it’s a calendar file) that can be sent out in an e-mail so recipients can simply click an attachment to add the event to their ICS file-aware calendar application, such as Outlook, iCal, Google calendar, etc. When I popped into Gmail to see how it handled the file, I noticed a strange text ad:

I’ve commented on AdWord oddities in the past, and my first thought was, “what the heck, how’d this slip past some Google engineer?” Naturally, I was intrigued and clicked. To my surprise, it was a real site: test.com, which is a web-based software company.

This intriguing ad prompts the question: is this a good way to write a PPC ad? First, the reason it appeared: Google’s context-based ad display parsed my message, whose subject included the word “test.” Violá, an ad for a product or service about testing appears. Second, the ad itself. Text ads have a headline, two lines of text, and a display URL. This one simply said test three time with what appeared to be a test URL. It certainly caught my eye because I thought it was a mistake. It was so curious to me that I had to click it to see what it was. In that sense it was successful—certainly more so than one that said “Affordable software testing” as a headline. But since I’m not in the market for that service, the click was wasted. It cost test.com some money with no hope for any return. Of course, without seeing their campaign data it’s hard to know what sort of success they’re having but I have to believe a good portion of their clicks (and therefor cost) come from people like me intrigued by the ad. So is that a valuable ad? I don’t think so.

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