Improving PPC
Posted by Melanie Phung on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Today some representatives of a major search engine visited us to demo the new PPC ad platform the company (let’s call it Y) will be rolling out later this year. The meeting was covered by a non-disclosure agreement so I can’t talk about anything (specific or otherwise) but I was given the go-ahead to mention the meeting and the fact that it was about a new PPC system. Luckily — and I believe it violates neither the spirit nor the letter of the NDA for me to point this out — other people have already been chatting about the system (here and here) and things I can’t mention (like possible similarities to products by algo-driven competitors. Or not.)
The move to a new system follows the recent termination of a relationship with another search engine, let’s call it MSN, wherein Y provided sponsored search results for MSN. MSN rolled out its own PPC platform in May.
Actually, the opposite. The new ad platform is similar to Google in that placement will no longer be determined strictly by the amount being bid on the keywords. Y is introducing something called a “quality index” score, which, like Google’s AdWords system, will weigh the quality of the ad when determining ranking. In other words, bidding the most on a keyword will not guarantee an advertiser the highest placement the way it does currently.
… which of course I’m not saying based on any knowledge of my own. I’m merely pointing out that other people in those threads I link to may have mentioned something to this effect. I know nothing. My lips are sealed.
Y’s management lost credibility and disappointed investors when it delayed the launch of the “Project Panama” to the fourth quarter of this year. The search platform is similar to Google’s system of ranking advertisements based on the amount paid by advertisers for keywords.