Search Advisory

What are the odds?  Two of my colleagues wrote articles on the same topic on the same day.  And not just some broad topic, either – they both wrote about how Google AdWords is complicated enough so that advertisers unfamiliar with their system end up paying more than they need to in a sort of tax.  (Pure coincidence that the posts came out the same day!)

Bryan Eisenberg writes:

“Google’s PPC platform is a marvel of simplicity. The price of that simplicity is high. In reducing the inherent complexity, the opportunity to fine-tune becomes hidden, practically lost. Simplicity is a large part of what makes Google’s business model so great.

If you want it complicated, more powerful, and enhanced through the API to make your PPC efforts more efficient, that’s completely available, as long as you’re prepared to dig.  If you want it simple, then you overpay.  Thus, simplicity acts like a tax.”

I love this – it’s something I try to convey to prospective clients (who want to handle pay-per-click themselves) often:  “The truth is that Google’s PPC advertisement platform is simple to use but hard to master.”

(Read Bryan Eisenberg’s “Google’s Secret Pay-Per-Click Tax“.)

My friend Andrew Goodman uses a tourism analogy to explain this phenomenon.  He says:

“On a recent trip to Italy, I was struck by the pricing gap between “insider deals” you might get if you were a local, and the prices paid by harried newbies who just got off the plane.  It’s price discrimination against…anyone who is new to the scene….

Some time ago, Google figured out the “tourist tax” phenomenon, presumably to the benefit of its profit margins. Some have called it a “bozo filter,” but that’s not fair. Tourists aren’t stupid, they’re just trapped, vulnerable, and in a bit too much of a hurry….

Google prefers the seasoned advertisers to the tourists, at the end of the day. But if the tourists are going to keep barging in to disrupt the flow of AdWords Nation – the least they can do is profit from their short-term stays. Your job is to minimize the damage, by thinking like a native.”

(Read Andrew Goodman’s “The Google AdWords ‘Tourist Tax’“.)