Howard Stern Sues Google; Discovers How Pay Per Click Makes Daily Budgets Fuzzy
from the now-this-should-be-fun dept
What is it with talk show hosts and Google? Following overhyped reports about David Letterman making a stupid joke about Google (which probably was more for the slight humor value than any actual dig at Google), Threadwatch has pointed out that Howard Stern has sued Google over misrepresentations concerning the "daily" AdWords budget. The complaint is a common one for AdWords users, but might not really be such a big deal. The problem is that, since Google charges advertisers per click rather than for placement, it's nearly impossible to guarantee that a daily budget will stay under the number. That's because Google keeps showing the ads not knowing if anyone's going to click. So, for example, if the daily budget is $10, and each click costs a dollar, when it gets up to $9 Google will keep showing the ad, but what if four people all see it and click on the ad? Then you've gone over budget. Google promises to try to even these discrepancies out over the course of a month, and many advertisers seem to believe it does a pretty good job of it. However, the wording of the "daily budget" might not be clear enough, so perhaps Google should better explain it for those who don't like to read the fine print. In this case, however, it appears the specific complaint was that Google promises that you will never pay more than 120% of the daily budget -- but did actually charge advertisers up to 162%. If that's the case, then, Google did screw up and go beyond their own stated terms. Either way, knowing Howard Stern, expect plenty of Google-bashing to go on the air. Guess we won't be hearing any Google representatives on Stern's show for at least a year. Update: People are now saying that this is a different Howard Stern, which would probably make more sense. The original sources the story was pulled from certainly implied it was the famous Howard Stern.
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Staying under budget?
What? I haven't advertised on Google for quite a while, but I distinctly remember being able to set an upper limit on how much I wanted to spend per day.
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Re: Staying under budget?
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Have you ever seen a Google ad for Stern's radio show or (ex)TV show?
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Re: Google is saying their technology sucks.
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Re: Google is saying their technology sucks.
So, say 10 people all see the same ad at the same time, but one more click hits the daily budget. If any of those other 9 people click at the same time, you go over the budget.
It has nothing to do with Google's technology. It has everything to do with the difference in time between presenting an ad and when it's clicked on.
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Re: Google is saying their technology sucks.
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Re: Google is saying their technology sucks.
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No Subject Given
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