Comatose Keyword Management Strategies

I'm over in London today meeting with our UK team as well as some clients that we've recently signed and who were previously using an SEM firm who in turn used idBay uddyBay (and you thought I only spoke two languages). For all the bravado and swagger with which said SEM firm/bid tool carries themselves across the UK and European search market, what I learned was shocking if not for the fact that I've seen it a hundred times.

So we went into the client's AdWords campaign and look at what reports had been run in the past, and it quickly became clear that the advertiser's "buddy" had never actually run either an impression or average position report.

This, folks, is proof positive that said SEM was neither looking at or making use of the data needed to model cost, revenue and volume trade offs for the advertiser's search campaign.

This *should* be shocking, but the reality is it's what we see 50-75% of the time in the States and 90%+ in Europe. SEM's here have had such an easy living the last few years that they've never actually had to build or do anything of value. Agency rebates from the SE's have, in and of themselves, made agencies look good.

As I told an unfortunately sparse crowd at SES Paris yesterday, European advertisers' revenue growth and margins from search *will* start to plateau in the coming months and quarters, and that will force advertisers to cast a more critical eye on their SEM providers and keyword management technologies.

Put another way, if your investment manager didn't look at the trading volume, 50/200-day moving averages or historical earnings reports of the stocks he bought for you, you'd either fire him or go broke.