Recently, many advertisers received an “exciting
announcement” in their Adwords accounts. Google announced that its new Automatic
Matching feature is rolling out in a new expanded beta format. Automatic Matching has
been enabled for some advertiser’s accounts since the end of February. The
expanded beta now opts more advertisers in to this feature.
Automatic Matching is an algorithm-based broad match feature
designed to serve ads on keywords not already in an advertiser’s keyword list.
It kicks in when an advertiser isn’t reaching their daily ad budget. For
example, if you have a daily ad budget of $10,000, and you’ve only used $8,000,
Google will automatically match queries to your ads to extract the additional
$2,000 in your budget. Google is constantly thinking of innovative new ways to
monetize every search query. Their Automatic Matching feature allows Google to
capitalize on queries which otherwise might not be associated with ads. Think
of Automatic Matching as broad match on autopilot.
So what does this mean for advertisers? Daily ad budgets
will be reached far more often, as any change left over in your purse will be
extracted by Google. We also know that poorly-managed broad match keywords can
devastate a campaign. Since Automatic Matching is a type of broad match, I
think it’s going to be very difficult for advertisers to manage these
campaigns. I expect to see lower click-thru rates and higher costs-per-click.
Google recommends that advertisers use the Search Query Report in Adwords to
see which keywords are triggering Automatic Matching. The only problem with
this is that the Search Query Report hides the actual keywords under a listing
of “XX Other Unique Queries”.
In the end, it sounds like Automatic Matching will most benefit
small- to medium-sized advertisers who lack dedicated SEM resources. However,
advertisers who actively manage their paid search campaigns may want to opt out
of this feature. There’s certainly a
cost associated with the convenience of letting a search engine manage your
paid search campaigns.