Dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) is the process by which you can carry the search phrase into your ads on Google. You’ve probably seen the silly ads by companies like Ebay who end up with ridiculous ads such as “Buy Nuclear Waste on Ebay” for a search about Nuclear Waste. It’s no wonder eBay pulled these ads from Google last year… they were probably wasting huge money.
Sloppy PPC
Broad match PPC ads with DKI are sloppy. Such automated ads rarely improve the search experience. A few more advanced PPC managers create morphing landing pages that account for this…but most advertisers are winging it.
Luckily for searchers – the syntax is hard for newbies and scares away many amateur advertisers. But there are plenty of fire-and-forget adwords buyers who are using it.
The only way I can see DKI being useful for those who care about the performance of their campaigns is through their use with exact match and highly researched keyphrases on the search network only. Here, you can insert text into the ad and guide the user into a relevant, thematic adgroup that funnels people into a landing page for the purpose. If the phrase doesn’t appear in the list you’ve defined, your ad does not display.
Will Quality Score Take Care of the Problem?
Will Quality Score slaps get rid of this problem on their own? I’m not sure. My tests have not shown any impact on costs of ‘poor’ ads using DKI that I’ve seen from clients. The silly ads just keep running. Google has said before that they use only exact matches to do the calculation, and they will disable poor quality keywords… but it still gets confusing about exactly what happens in the broad match + DKI situation. I guess it depends on the landing pages.
Trademark Troubles
The trouble starts when people begin to enter trademarked terms. Now, the ad-buying company is posting ads generated by the search activity that might include trademarked phrases. This negligence appears to be gaining some legal footing as a justifiable lawsuit, where earlier it was a bit fuzzy and things were happening on both sides. Only if you post negative keyphrases of all trademarked terms in your industry can you prevent it.
Exact match DKI – What would this do?
Exact match DKI prevents the problem, improves the ads, and puts the responsibility for legal keyword use in ads squarely on the advertiser. If the ad showed the keyword in ad copy, there is no question the phrase is in the advertisers’ keyword list somewhere. Google can disable poor quality keywords straightaway from the keyword list rather than through some mysterious invisible system.
What are your thoughts? Should Google block DKI on broad match? What are some good uses of this you’ve found? Does quality score, which is determined through exact match vesion of keyphrase only
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