Comments on: eBay Pulls Google AdWords Ads To Protest Google Checkout Moves http://searchengineland.com/ebay-pulls-google-adwords-ads-to-protest-google-checkout-moves-11468 Search Engine Land: Must Read News About Search Marketing & Search Engines Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:10:22 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: ShaunRyan http://searchengineland.com/ebay-pulls-google-adwords-ads-to-protest-google-checkout-moves-11468/comment-page-1#comment-2877 ShaunRyan Fri, 15 Jun 2007 05:08:18 +0000 http://searchengineland.com/beta/ebay-pulls-google-adwords-ads-to-protest-google-checkout-moves-11468.php#comment-2877 Matt Ackley from eBay explained how they generate those strange ads on Google at eTail earlier this year. For those of you that are interested I wrote it up <a href="http://blog.sli-systems.com/2007/02/why_ebay_does_stupid_ads.html" rel="nofollow">here</a> Matt Ackley from eBay explained how they generate those strange ads on Google at eTail earlier this year. For those of you that are interested I wrote it up here

]]> By: Click Forensics http://searchengineland.com/ebay-pulls-google-adwords-ads-to-protest-google-checkout-moves-11468/comment-page-1#comment-2876 Click Forensics Thu, 14 Jun 2007 13:50:23 +0000 http://searchengineland.com/beta/ebay-pulls-google-adwords-ads-to-protest-google-checkout-moves-11468.php#comment-2876 Prior to their acquisition by eBay, PayPal executed the same strategy at the first eBay Live event in Anaheim, CA in 2002. They offered cash prizes to everyone that walked around eBay Live wearing a PayPal t-shirt and even held a huge party right outside the front doors of the event in a huge party tent. The difference was that PayPal was already being used as a payment method on a large percentage of items on eBay and was quickly being adopted by the eBay community as the payment of choice over BillPoint (anyone remember BillPoint?). I agree with Danny and hope the eBay experiment continues... eBay has done several initiatives to improve it's organic search results but continues to bid (or at least seems to bid) on every word - across every language. Most people I know have stopped clicking on eBay ads in Google as the search results are generally empty when you are redirected to the eBay site. A better way for eBay to get Google's attention would be to analyze their PPC ad click traffic from Made For Ads (MFA) sites in the content network, identify the ones which provide no conversions, and exclude all of the these sites using Google's domain exclusion list (now that advertisers can add an unlimited number of sites to the exclusion list). This represents a large amount of wasted ad spend and in eBay's case, probably represents an interesting amount of revenue for Google. Kevin Embree SVP, Product Strategy Click Forensics Prior to their acquisition by eBay, PayPal executed the same strategy at the first eBay Live event in Anaheim, CA in 2002. They offered cash prizes to everyone that walked around eBay Live wearing a PayPal t-shirt and even held a huge party right outside the front doors of the event in a huge party tent. The difference was that PayPal was already being used as a payment method on a large percentage of items on eBay and was quickly being adopted by the eBay community as the payment of choice over BillPoint (anyone remember BillPoint?).

I agree with Danny and hope the eBay experiment continues… eBay has done several initiatives to improve it’s organic search results but continues to bid (or at least seems to bid) on every word – across every language. Most people I know have stopped clicking on eBay ads in Google as the search results are generally empty when you are redirected to the eBay site.

A better way for eBay to get Google’s attention would be to analyze their PPC ad click traffic from Made For Ads (MFA) sites in the content network, identify the ones which provide no conversions, and exclude all of the these sites using Google’s domain exclusion list (now that advertisers can add an unlimited number of sites to the exclusion list). This represents a large amount of wasted ad spend and in eBay’s case, probably represents an interesting amount of revenue for Google.

Kevin Embree
SVP, Product Strategy
Click Forensics

]]>