Google Changes Adwords Ad Strategy

February 8th, 20116:16 pm @

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Google is looking to deepen their taken on ads from just link ads, to leads. I personally think this is amazing and is really going to change a lot! Right now they are picking out certain industries, having just had a roundtable with car dealers at the NADA convention this week. Here’s more about it from Brian Pasch of PCG Consulting who was there at NADA.

Link to original post (http://www.internetsalesmanager.org/profiles/blog/show?id=3271765:BlogPost:6387&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_post)

Google Changes Automotive Adwords Strategy

Google met with top automotive dealers and manufacturers at the 2011 NADA Convention in San Francisco this week to introduce their new lead generation model for search, which one insider called “Dealer Preference”. This is a new strategy for their popular Google Adwords software.

The new paid automotive advertising model by Google would create special automotive ads which are designed to generate calls or leads, which will be sold to the highest bidder. This is a game changer in my mind but people at the meeting said that dealer response was very mild.

Take a look at this screen capture for the search phrase “mortgage loans” and look at the new Adwords section that says “Comparison Ad” that is highlighted in red.

Google Automotive Lead Gen

This model is new to the automotive industry but not new to other verticals like Mortgages. You can see from the screen shot above highlighted in red, Google has created a special new pink bar for ads that it creates for lead capture and places them ABOVE normal Adwords ads. Notice that ad has radio buttons and a call to action to “Compare Rates”.

On a related note, you will also see one business using Google Boost and how much more attractive PPC ads will be getting if a car dealer has high review counts!

When you click on that link, this is what you will see:

Google Automotive Comparison Ads

The position of this page is sold to the highest bidder, I assume. Details on the Dealer Preference advertising is forthcoming in a second post.  My first guess that this will be used for New Car advertising and that some OEM’s might prefer this enhanced lead generation model.  The jury is still out and I need to get more information on this product offering.

This is a game changer for the automotive advertising industry. If Google starts to become a middle-man in automotive price advertising and comparisons, a whole new strategy will need to be considered. It still will have to be seen if this increases clicks on paid ads.

Automotive Advertising Changes Again

This new features does a few things:

  1. It pushes other paid ads lower on the right sidebar.
  2. It pushes organic search results down so positions 1-3 become even more valuable
  3. Dealers that have been ignoring Adwords will need to get in the game and test things.

The idea that Google has in mind is that if a consumer types in “Used Honda Miami” it will display its OWN lead collection ad and show cars or sales based on participating dealers.

What is your reaction?