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Google Plays Politics With Election-Facing CPC Bids

  • SEM Geek, Monday, January 28, 2008 1:15 PM
The gloves are off when it comes to advertising for the upcoming elections, and while the debate is still on about how much the candidates will spend on Web ads, Google is already banking on snagging megabucks for paid search.

With $10 minimum bids for state-targeted, generic phrases like "2008 elections" and "2008 senator election"--one can only imagine how expensive national-facing phrases like "presidential primaries" or "presidential election" are. The problem is that the giant's predictive tools can't even offer up a preliminary guess for how much traffic such terms may generate.

Greg Meyer has some advice for search marketers that are lucky enough to be involved in this political ad race: namely, to make sure that the accompanying ad copy and landing page elements are as keyword-rich, relevant and conversion-inducing as possible. Then make the bid--and wait for Google to establish enough campaign history and CTR data so that the prices come down. Meyer says that you can also shift more of the client's dollars to Yahoo if they're not comfortable playing Google's game.

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