FURY AT GOOGLE: Advertisers Say New Search Rules Are 'Stealing' From Them
Previously, advertisers bought separate search word campaigns on mobile, tablet and desktop devices. They paid different prices for each type of device, depending on the demand.
There are fewer bidders for mobile users, however, and cost-per-click prices on mobile were thus lower. In fact, Google in November had to warn Wall Street of a "deceleration" in its desktop ad business caused by a shift of advertisers into the cheaper mobile medium.
Now, Google is simplifying its Adwords process by making advertisers buy search words across desktop, mobile and tablet devices all at once. Advertisers will get less of a choice about where their ads appear. Advertisers can weight their campaigns in favor of mobile or desktop, but they can't focus only on one medium. That will have the effect of lumping demand together across devices, and raising prices overall. There is no guarantee they'll get better results, either, these advertisers say.
One search marketing exec told ZDNet:
"They're stealing money from advertisers because they can," he said. "It's the most lowbrow thing Google has ever done. The damage this is going to do to advertisers is big. They're going to sell a story to the public and be the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain."
iProspect, a search marketing agency, said:
Advertisers who do not have a smartphone strategy will be forced to come up with one, or leverage the bid multiplier workaround (setting the bid multiplier to negative 100 percent) to opt out of smartphones. Advertisers who don’t take the time to make this adjustment, or are unaware of it, will start serving ads on smartphones unintentionally. This is an example of Google deciding what is best for the advertiser - however, in this case they’re not just opting you into a setting by default, they’re removing the option of opting out or using a workaround. iProspect believes that the increase in the number of advertisers participating in the auction on smartphone searches will lead to increased overall CPCs.
Search Engine Watch described the move as "cynical":
A cynic might suggest that this move will change the pattern of mobile bidding. By removing advertiser control at a keyword level we might see mobile CPCs rise, pushing up Google's revenues by pretty serious amounts.
And in a carefully worded opinion piece, Adobe came out swinging against Google, noting that it was now impossible to run a tablet-only campaign, and that advertisers might see lower return on investment for higher costs:
According to Google’s announcement today, advertisers can no longer target tablet users individually. Tablet users will be lumped in with desktop users, while smartphone users can be targeted differently through Google’s new “Enhanced Campaign” functionality. ...
That’s just half of the story though. Currently, CPCs are lower for tablets given that competition for tablet traffic is still relatively low (but increasing). By lumping the higher performing tablet traffic in with desktop traffic, revenue per search (RPS) will increase for Google as CPCs increase on the combined desktop and tablet traffic. This, presumably, will address Google’s mobile monetization gap as an increasing share of searches is coming from tablets and smartphones.
The downside for advertisers in the long run is they may see lower overall ROI as these CPCs creep up.
The critics are right about one thing. Google's CPC has been declining for a while, and it's almost certainly because of mobile. Here's a chart:
Following that decline, Larry Page told investors on his Q4 earnings call that Google may have been wrong to encourage advertisers to pursue mobile-only marketing strategies.
It's rare for their to be this level of public protest, this quickly, when a major advertising partner like Google changes it policies. In the ad biz, people tend to be polite in public and express their displeasure behind the scenes.
So expect Google to take these complaints seriously.