Google - Direct Mail piece on Adwords optimisation

Anyone else get the direct mail piece from Google with tips on how to optimise Adwords performance?

Maybe we're spending too much with them so qualify for costly printed material - it was certainly an expensive looking bit of print. Maybe if we spent more we'd get something even more swanky and offline... ;)

Still, it's interesting to see an online behemoth using DM in this way. Even Google believe in the multi-channel marketing future it would seem.

The most interesting bits in it for me were:

- Image ads. Examples of Google images ads are at https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/imagesamples.html. Google is no doubt already the largest online ad network that exists, even for image ads, but this may well explode in size shortly?

- Adsense / Content Targeting. Perhaps like others we've always found that ads served in the context of content, rather than search, have performed much worse for us in terms of ROI. Interestingly, Google appear to have dropped the term 'Adsense' from this brochure and have also now introduced "smart pricing" which effectively appears to be a discount for content-targeted ads:

"Because search and content clicks are different, AdWords content clicks are adjusted by Google's new "Smart Pricing" policy to boost the ROI of your campaign. If our data shows that a content page click is less likely to result in actionable business, such as an online sale, phone call, or registration, the price you pay for that click on a content site will be reduced, sometimes below the minimum bid you assigned to it."

What is also interesting about the above is that it implies Google knows whether you make sales or not i.e. is tracking through to conversion. Maybe, with Google Analytics, Google also knows the conversion value. 

Are Google edging towards a CPA model - or at least being able to offer, and optimise, a CPC / CPA hybrid?

I guess the idea is that if you open up your business to Google more and more then you'll be more tied to them but they'll try and help you in return by auto-optimising and charging you by results?

Ashley Friedlein
CEO, E-consultancy.com