Will Google Lower Its Standards To Save Ad Revenues?
By Anna Johnson on July 22nd, 2008David Rodnitzky makes a good point in the Search Marketing Standard. If the recession starts to bite online publishers reliant on advertising revenues, maybe, just maybe, Google won’t be able to be so picky when it comes to favoring some advertisers over others.
Online advertising has continued to grow, especially as more money has been taken out of off-line budgets and into what is unquestionably a medium that continues to attract more and more consumers. However, the economic downturn occurring in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere means that marketers will have less money to spend overall, resulting in slower growth in online advertising expenditure.
Google, although continuing to perform strongly, missed Wall Street’s first quarter forecasts and is not immune to the effects of slower growth in ad spends.
So… in an effort to save revenues, will it drop its Quality Score standard?
Google’s Quality Score standard was introduced in 2006 to help ensure that landing pages for Google Adwords ads were relevant to the ads being displayed. Advertisers that Google regarded as having landing pages that were NOT sufficiently related to their ads were penalized with substantially higher bid prices – the idea being to deter such companies from running such campaigns.
Mr Rodnitzky points out that it’s all very well for Google to deter “low quality” advertisers when there are plenty of other advertisers willing to replace them. But what if the number of other advertisers starts to wane?
What if falling or stagnating Google Adwords revenues mean that Google will continue missing forecasts UNLESS it attracts more advertisers… such as those companies running lower quality ads that Google previously spurned?
I doubt that Google is anywhere close to relaxing its quality score for now… and it would be loathe to do an “about face” on this… but time – and the economic downturn – will tell…
Source: David Rodnitzky, “Is Quality Score Recession-Proof?”, Search Marketing Standard, July 21, 2008
