Last Thursday Google quietly rolled out a new feature in AdWords called Comparison Ads. The official explanation (via the Google AdWords blog) is that Comparison Ads “lets users compare multiple, relevant offers more easily.” Okay, I can buy that. Google trying to make things easier on users. They do that a lot. However, this should make a lot of AdWords advertisers uneasy.

Why Comparison Ads Are Good

The most obvious benefit is that given by Google; it allows users to make a quick comparison of different offers and take action easily. Also, for some advertisers, only having to pay once a lead or phone call comes in (instead of paying for lots of clicks that don’t convert) will be a blessing.

Why Comparison Ads Are Evil

Basically, Comparison Ads are evil because this gives Google more power and advertisers less power. Just look at the example that Google put on their own blog. The screenshot shows 9 lenders, all on the same page with their name, APR, fees, two lines of ad copy and call-to-action buttons all lines up in pretty little rows. How does a lender set themselves apart? Are two lines of ad copy enough to convey your competitive advantages?

As a consumer I would look at this page and the first thing I would do is look for the lowest APR (which Google has conveniently bolded and enlarged). Then I would look at the fees and payment info next to the APR. See what’s happening? Pure price comparison. You no longer have landing pages to convey your message. You will always be listed right next to your competitors. This should make AdWords advertisers very nervous.

So What?

I’m interested to hear your thoughts. Hopefully I’ve got you thinking and if I’m wrong I want to hear why because I would dearly like to be wrong on this one.

The greatest strength of AdWords has always been the fantastic metrics. As a PPC manager for an internet marketing agency I can attest to the fact that clients love knowing exactly how much they’re spending, how many visitors they get for that money and how many conversions it produces. However, Google isn’t resting on its laurels.

Google Campaign Insights

In short, Campaign Insights is an attempt to attach metrics to impressions in the content network (currently a money black hole for many advertisers) by utilizing the massive amount of search data that Google possesses. These metrics are generated by comparing two groups: one large group who saw your ads and one large group that didn’t. Campaign Insights then compares search behavior and visits to your site to determine if the impressions had any effect on their behavior. That is pretty dang cool.

For those people who worry about privacy concerns, Google only uses data from Google Toolbar users who have opted in to enhanced features. Also, the data is anonymized as well as obfuscated by the size of the groups being analyzed. Translation to all that jargon: nobody knows your search history.

Yesterday I was reminded of a paradox in PPC management. As you expand your PPC efforts beyond a single campaign with a single ad group you too have encountered the paradox, though in varying degrees. This paradox is caused by the collision of two commonly accepted best practices: testing and tightly-themed ad groups.

Testing v. Granularization

Anyone worth their salt in PPC knows that you should always be testing. You test two to three versions of ad copy to get a better CTR. You test two different landing pages to improve conversion rate. You also know that these tests require a certain amount of clicks or conversions before they achieve validity.

Another best practice (and Google pushes this a lot) is to create small, tightly themed ad groups. By having only a handful of keywords in your ad group you can write extremely targeted ad copy and send traffic to a more targeted landing page. This practice improves the chain of relevancy (and your QS) while optimizing the user experience. The paradox, however, lies at the convergence of these concepts in practice.

The Paradox

The genesis for this post was a Powerpoint sent to me by one of our Google reps. The recommendations were solidly based on best practices like the two mentioned above, but the part that got me was when the slide said that by making more ad groups that were small and tightly themed I would have “easier campaign management.” On the surface that seems accurate; the ad groups have fewer keywords and the copy would be more specific, but what about tests?

To reach validity tests need to achieve a certain number of actions or responses. This particular client already has their campaign divided into nearly 100 campaigns with hundreds of ad groups. They spend a lot of money, but even with the existing account structure tests can take weeks or months to achieve validity. And now Google wants me to INCREASE the number of ad groups, further spreading out my traffic into more tests? This could potentially slow our test iterations to a virtual standstill.

Perhaps I’m tripping out about nothing, but I’m curious what all of you think. How do you balance testing and granularization?

PS I would especially appreciate someone from AdWords to chime in here, so consider this a challenge Google.