• PPC Hero , Wednesday, May 28, 2008 12:45 PM

When Google announced its Automatic Matching feature, many marketers were concerned even about the possibility of letting the search giant run ads for keywords and queries on its own--essentially burning the budget on words and even categories that they wouldn't have chosen themselves.

Now that the giant has begun rolling out the practice, reports of how well (or not) Automatic Matching works are rolling in. Hanapin Marketing's Amber Benedict gives the rundown on the results of a week-long test--and the outcome was a little underwhelming.

"I've had a full week in running the new feature and I'm sad to report I only received one additional click from the automatic matching test," she says. "However, when I ran a search query report to find the term that showed my ad through the automatic matching feature, it wasn't a keyword I wanted to target, therefore costing me $.25 in an irrelevant click to my site."

While Benedict cautions that results may vary by vertical, by advertiser, and even by ad group or keyword, she does say that this first iteration didn't exactly instill her with confidence. The verdict? "It's not going to be as big as we all thought it might be in terms of driving additional traffic, whether relevant or irrelevant," Benedict says.

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