A Clockwork Google
Is Google getting closer to solving consumer behavior? Yes and no, and yes, maybe. On Tuesday Susan Wojcicki, Google vice president of product management for advertising told Reuters Google would shy away from targeting consumer behavior. However on the same day Nick Fox, Google’s group business product manager, told ClickZ of the latest, nameless feature of Adwords that captures a better understanding of searcher’s intent in order to deliver better ads.
With this feature Adwords follows a user’s searches, and if a past search correlates to a new search, Adwords will combine the two in the users paid search results. However, Fox doesn’t like the term “behavioral targeting,” to describe this new feature partly because it’s a loaded term. While this feature works wonders for the weekend warrior searching for softball equipment in his town, immediately after searching for softball leagues, the feature does not bode as well for the weekend warrior Sadist searching for basketballs after an exhaustive search for gag balls.
Was that an extreme example? Of course it was. Sadists always refresh their browsers. Other than Google’s loose interpretation of what behavior is, the real problem this feature presents is the fact that advertisers are being left in the dark if and when their ad is not being seen because of a past related search. Fox maintains the ads only appear to users for searches performed back-to-back, but such is the amount of time it takes a user to switch search topics.
I think everyone in the SEM industry is under the impression that this tool is taking Google one step closer to the Mecca of advertising that is consumer behavior, but before that is accomplished Google might want to make sure they are aware of their advertiser’s behavior.
