Your PPC Sucks

*Ad was user submission: Thanks Ben!

We all know you can find just about ANYTHING on the internet. What you may not know, is despite Google’s strict rules prohibiting the sale of illegal drugs via Adwords, eBay.Com and Local.com have found a way to solicit Meth. Crystal.

The hard stuff. Ice. Crank. White Crunch. Crizzy. Devil Dust.

It doesn’t help that eBbay.co.uk’s advertisement says “Feed your passion on eBay.com.uk!”

Utah Meth? Isn’t that the last state you’d think would be advertising Meth? ( Or maybe the conservative religious base is just a cover! )

Assignment America!

Search for “Buy Meth” in your homestate, let’s see who is advertising on it. Send me a screen shot.

Let’s start this post with answering a common question that will come to mind. No, I don’t know why anyone was searching for ‘leg amputees‘ on Google. But, a user gave me a link to the results page and I had to write a post about it.

“So, honey – when does our new leg amputee come in? You know we have to keep up with the Jones’s!”

What I really want to know is, what word was Shopzilla.com bidding on? Leg or Amputees?

Neither. They are actually bidding on the term “Leg Amputees” exactly. Naturally, I HAD to see the landing page so I clicked through. (is that click fraud? . . . sorry)

They did a great job building up my excitement! “You’re about to discover great deals on…. Leg Amputees”. Yes! I can’t wait!

.  .  .  . sad panda. It was disappointing. Nothing. They don’t actually sell any leg amputees.

Screw you Shopzilla!

I am sure you share in my disappointment, and I am sorry you can’t actually buy a leg amputee, but I have good new for those with a very specific kind of fetish: (still using the same search term ‘leg amputees’).

I love the internet, it does so much for all of us.

Rule #1 when advertising to the blind: Don’t mention SEE or SEEN or SEEING ever.

There’s a line and they crossed it. Without shame. It’s a great way to give the middle finger to the handicapped TechMatrix.org and BrailleBookstore.com

I'm sure they'd love to see it. Rub it in.

And they never will BrailleBookstore.com.... and they never will.

MSN apparently didn’t have the secret sauce for some reason, but I didn’t think Yahoo would turn to running a PPC campaign to round up new buyers.

Do I GET 10,000 stores if I buy Yahoo? Is that the '& More' ?

You’d think these deep pocket companies would take the time to get their sh$% together. No campaign is too large for the Fortune 500 – they are just lazy (Target.Com and eBay -I expect to have LOTs of ad’s in a top 10 worst ppc ads competition).

Their entire account was built by a robot. They could probably triple their sales if they paid some 16 year old stoner to fancy up their ad’s even just a little.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion & Copy/Paste at it's best.

While looking for a theme to set up this very blog, I searched “Free wordpress themes” on Google. iThemes.com came up at the top with an ad that was somewhat enticing. I wanted a professionally designed theme that I could modify easily, and their add looked like it was going to give me what I wanted.

I should have known though. What were the odds that when I searched for ‘free wordpress themes’ that I could actually find a PPC ad for someone offering free products? Rule #1 for eCommerce sites: Don’t let yourself waste so much stinking money on users who don’t want to buy anything!

No mention of 'Free' in the ad, but it didn't pre-qualify with being 'paid' only either.

I searched for "Free WordPress Themes"

Remembering that I searched for “Free Wordpress Themes”, it’s crucial to pre-qualify your users by either mentioning you only offer paid products (and don’t trust that a Google Checkout button will do the trick) or by adding -Free as a negative keyword in your campaign.

Seriously? Save yourself some money iThemes. PPC can be a money-pit for your business if you make this mistake. Businesses too often will look at their PPC campaigns, see money being spent and not enough conversions to make it worth it so they’ll cut it with out knowing their clicks are coming from people wanting FREE STUFF!