My campaign is too targeted for Adwords - Huh?

I have recently launched a big campaign on Adwords. To my surprise, my bids instantly went to $10 after uploading the campaign. Now this wasn’t some junk campaign with a million keywords in one adgroup, and a shady redirect landing page. This was a super tight campaign with no more than 3 keywords per adgroup, and each adgroup sent to a highly targeted landing page. So naturally I requested a manual review from Adwords support. I never expected the response I got.

First they gave the standard quality score stock answer, but then I quote:

“Additionally, when I was reviewing your account, I found that your keywords are highly relevant to your products and/or services. However, your keywords may be too specific. We’ve found that Google users are less likely to search for highly specific keywords. They’re more likely to search for a commonly used term. “

WTF? My kewords are “too specific”? You want me to use general search terms, that aren’t so targeted? This really goes against everything they have ever put out about their quality score and their desire to provide the most targeted and relevant results to their users. To further confuse the issue, they go on to say:

“Although specific keywords are usually better than general ones, a keyword list that’s too small or specific can limit your ad exposure. Showing your ad to your entire target audience can help improve your ROI and campaign performance.”

OK, so what I submitted is usually better, but for some reason it’s not in this case? Apparently Google no longer wants advertisers going after anything but short tail keywords. This exchange is just another reason why I prefer YSM or even MSN to Adwords these days.

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11 Comments »

Comment by Michal Goc

2008-01-14 09:27:39

Sometimes I wonder if they really believe their own spin on things. The reply you got was true in a sense though, if they up your bids to $10 then it definitely limits exposure!

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Comment by Sucker

2008-01-14 14:29:13

What the…?!

Pretty soon Adwords success will really just be luck… or million dollar budgets for branding campaigns.

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Comment by Shawn

2008-01-14 16:29:21

That is retarded. Sounds like they’re just trying to suck more money out of you.

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Comment by Scott

2008-01-14 16:40:25

ok, now I have seen everything. Did you respond to their email??

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Comment by Daniel

2008-01-15 01:02:54

I’d like to see a follow up to this post; that is if you are following up with their email.

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Comment by CPA Affiliates

2008-01-15 15:00:03

wow thats crazy man i have never had that happen before.

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Comment by Chad

2008-01-15 23:04:32

Scott- Yes I did follow up. I still haven’t heard back from them. I’m guessing they really don’t have an answer for me.

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Pingback by The $75,000 Google slap | CDF Networks - Affiliate Marketing Blog

2008-02-06 15:43:42

[…] I have contacted Adwords, and am still waiting for a response. (perhaps this campaign is also too targeted?) I just kind of find it sad that Google would let something run so long, and take so much of my […]

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Comment by ro

2008-02-06 17:48:40

This would be a way to push advertisers into a single small bucket so that the bidding frenzy takes over and instead of .30 a click we have to pay $1 per click..

Another thought is the speedppc 1 keyword, 1 adword group method; perhaps they are trying to stop this method..

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Comment by B2B SEO

2008-02-09 02:40:20

Or since they went public, they’re under some pressure to cut costs (cycle time keeping track of keywords) Yeah, it sounds insane, I know but how much are the people being paid who pull the plug on these ads and campaigns? I get warnings that my keywords are getting to “unmanageable levels”… really? Nobody can write a mathematical model to handle some gruntwork automation?

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Comment by Matt

2008-02-19 02:00:18

for $1per click is expensive. the ideal of placing limit on amount especially the $10 is killing

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