Just yesterday I was asked by MediaPost about my thoughts on Google’s “new” Placement Targeting for a upcoming article they were working on. I was quoted in the article as saying the CPM is “so old school”, so I wanted to take a moment to elaborate on that concept a bit more.

For readers unfamiliar with CPM I’ll just point you to Wikipedia. Previously, Google offered Site Targeting, a method for listing your Google Ads on a wide variety of non-Google sites. The principle bidding method for Site Targeting was CPM. Often advertisers didn’t know what price to start their bidding at and most of the time the bids were too low. With Placement Targeting Google has revamped Site Targeting and is now asking the advertiser to bid on ads using the familiar Google CPC (cost-per-click) method. This change by Google makes bidding on non-Google ads a more understandable process for the new advertiser.

CPM still has it’s place for branding; however it is my stance that CPM is quickly going the way of the dodo bird. Our clients aren’t likely to quantify branding via CPM, yet CPC is very quantifiable. CPC measures action, CPM hopes for increased awareness. One method gives me a shotgun to hit my target from 50 yards, while the other gives me a sniper rifle to hit my target from 300 yards. I’ll take the sniper rifle please.

I thought with the most recent round of changes that Google Analytics would have better integration with AdWords, but that hasn’t happened. We have one master account to manage all our clients under Google Adwords, likewise we have several accounts in Google Analytics where we track our client’s data, yet Analytics and Adwords aren’t quite integrated enough to communicate which accounts belong to who.

If I am logged into Google Analytics under our master account I can see clients A, B & C. If I go into Google Adwords I can see clients A, B & C, however when I turn on conversion tracking for ROI analysis Google Adwords doesn’t check first with Analytics to see which domains I have under my account. Instead AdWords wants me to create a new Analytics account for the domain.

This should be simple. Couldn’t Google check Analytics and offer me the option of using an existing Analytics domain vs creating a new one?

Yahoo, how is it that you’ve missed the boat on the whole pay-per-click model? How is it that after several years your system for managing PPC has actually devolved into a barely usable duct taped garbage heap that marketers run from?

I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt several times over yet you still underwhelm me. I’m at a loss for understanding why with even a highly profitable model like Google Adwords, you haven’t at least copied some aspects of Google Adwords. Just the other day I did some basic account changes and reporting in your system, it took me well over an hour to do several tasks which would take less the 15 minutes in Google.

How can I justify using your system? Your ROI is less then Google’s, you send less traffic then Google and your management interface is a nightmare?  Let’s get real, Microsoft AdCenter is the new kid on the block and it looks lightyears more developed then your system. You just don’t get it!

Lately I’ve been seen an increasing amount of Flash ads which escape from the confines of the traditional ad box. You’ve seen the ads, a car driving over your text, stops, flashes it’s lights and encourages you to click for more information.

Most of the ads I’ve seen can be worked around; however the latest ad from the weather channel takes the cake. (View it here)  This page is vertically oriented, forcing most users to scroll. Upon moving from the left to the right across the ad, the ad to expands until the mouse reaches the browser scroll bar. Upon return from right to left the ad then again blocks the content before fully contracting. This might be one of the worst ad placements I can think of. Perhaps this ad would be better served on the left side of the screen away from the users interaction with the browsers navigation system.
Has anyone else found ads which hinder website usability?