Over the weekend, SEOFastStart gave out some information about a private Adwords beta program. A few Adwords advertisers in the US have been invited to participate in a beta test of 'Automatic Matching':
"I'm excited to tell you that you have been selected to participate in a beta for our new Automatic matching feature which will be starting on February 28th.
Automatic matching automatically extends your campaign's reach by using surplus budget to serve your ads on relevant search queries that are not already triggered by your keyword lists. By analyzing the structure and content of your website and Adwords campaigns, we deliver more impressions and clicks while maintaining your current CTRs and CPCs.
For example, If you sold Adidas shoes on your website, Automatic matching would automatically crawl your landing page and target your campaigns to queries such as: "shoes" "adidas" "athletic", etc., and less obvious ones such as "slippers" that our system has determined will benefit you and likely lead to a conversion on your site.
Be assured that automatic matching will try to never exceed your budget. If you're already meeting your daily budgets, automatic matching will have a minimal effect on your account."
So it's a *bit* like broad match, except that Google's algorithm is magically choosing the keywords that it will broad match against by looking at your website as well as the current keywords you are targeting.
Most bloggers seem to be seeing this as yet another opportunity for Google to rake in more cash by helping advertisers to spend up to their maximum budgets each month. But this is explicitly denied by Google Adword's unofficial spokesman 'Adwords Advisor' who comments that Automatic Matching "…is not intended 'exhaust the budget' - rather it is only meant to deliver additional traffic where performance metrics such as CTRs and CPCs stack up well against the adgroups current CTR and CPC. If there is no additional relevant traffic to direct to the advertisers campaigns, automatic matching will not spend additional money."
This is just a beta test and may never be rolled out. However it does suggest a certain pragmatism within the Googleplex around the previous holy grail of relevance. Back in the real world, a media buy that placed adverts for airlines alongside editorial on sailing would be simple common sense: for Adwords, you risk low CTRs, high CPCs and ultimately having your keywords disqualified.
I can see a real advantage for clients operating in sectors where CPCs are relatively high – like insurance and loans. But if these advertisers start being automatically placed in 'less relevant' areas, that can only push up bid prices in those areas.
Of course the real benefit will be for agencies whose goal is simply to blast through a client's budget each month with little thought for effectiveness. Automatic Matching gives them a great way to guarantee that budgets are spent – and all with a minimum of human intervention. So perhaps that will be the final scorecard: good for Google, good for lazy agencies, bad for the clients at lazy agencies.
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