SES NY: Ads in a Quality Score World
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | April 10, 2007 | Share This
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Quality Score, the notorious “black box” of search marketing, is the search engines’ method of assessing the relevancy of paid search ads. Because the engines do not disclose their quality score algorithms beyond a few rudimentary measures, the best practices of quality-based bidding are widely debated.
I attended the session “Ads in a Quality Score World” when it first debuted in Chicago in December 2006. Interestingly, the session in Chicago talked about quality score as a positive, despite the amount of negative criticism it’s usually given. Today’s session in New York carried the same tone - as moderator Gord Hotchkiss began, “this session is about how quality score is a win-win-win situation.”
Reprise Media’s Josh Stylman presented first. Stylman set up the context of quality score,”Quality score is the way that search engines rank ads based on a number of quality factors.” Starting with GoTo.com, Stylman ran through the history of the search auction marketplace - a marketplace fundamentally defined, he said, by Google’s introduction of unique ranking variables beyond CPC. In 2005, for example, Google began including not just CPC and CTR measures of “relevancy, but also landing page and historical data. As a result, Google created a system that would maximize it’s profit while delivering a better user experience. But, as Stylman pointed out, some unintended consequences arose from quality-based rankings. Quality score is still widely criticized for causing artificial CPC inflation, for its contradicting definitions of “quality”, and for penalizing ad testing and optimization.
No less, Google “caught the market by surprise” when they launched their new ad ranking system. Yahoo followed Google’s lead this past February with Panama - that, despite it’s late entry, has given advertisers a chance to study the affect of quality-based bidding on a sophisticated auction market. In one example, Stylman showed how Panama caused a decrease in CPC for branded key terms, but an increase in price for non-branded terms. He also pointed to a case where CTR went up, but on-site conversions went down. His point was that, though quality score is in theory a “win-win-win” situation, in practice it’s not always the best measure of value to the client.
Andrew Goodman, founder and Principal of Page Zero Media, followed Josh. He presented a similar run-down of the history behind quality score and it’s fundamental operation. While Josh pointed out that historical data in quality score sometimes penalizes testing and optimization, Goodman praised historical data for making ads more stable. The tightness of relationship between keyword, ad and landing page, he said, illustrates that search is the least “disruptive” type of advertising.
No less, Goodman admitted that it can be frustrating to assess cause and effect with quality score. For example, he speculated that user behavior might affect ad rankings - if a user abandons a landing page for a competing search engine, for example, it could have a negative effect on the advertiser’s “quality” rating.
John Mendez from Otto Digital spoke next, discussing quality score in terms of user experience. Mendez praised quality score because it simultaneously improves user experience and ad performance. “Ignore the score”, he announced, because advertisers will do better by focusing on overall relevance rather than the incremental contributors. By building ads for relevance, Mendez said, search acts as a bridge between the keyword and the landing page.
Representatives from Google, Yahoo and MSN presented last, leading into the Q & A session. Nick Fox from Google began, “our single goal is to make sure that our sure our users are happy and are getting what they want from our ads.” To no one’s surprise, Yahoo and Microsoft reiterated the importance of user experience. Each of the engines praised the panelists’ presentation of quality score, underscoring their ongoing commitment to “improving relevancy”. At one point, Brian Boland from Microsoft alluded, “look for a quality-based ranking in the next couple of weeks,” but didn’t return to the subject.
In sum, this panel was not much different from it’s first incarnation in Chicago - read my earlier write-up here. Though Fox from Google claimed that “quality score is no longer a ‘black box’,” it’s evident that there’s still a lot of apprehension and confusion surrounding it. Many of the panelists’ statements seemed to contradict each other - Google encouraged ad testing, though Stylman pointed to evidence that testing has challenged some of Reprise Media campaigns. Microsoft praised increasing transparency, while Google claimed that their ‘opaque’ algorithm gives rise to industry expertise.
There was one consensus throughout the group, however, which was best summed up by Stylman - “quality score puts the M back in SEM.”
Topics: Advertising: Online, Conferences & Events, SEM: Ad Creative, SEM: Bid Management, Search: How-To |
Hi Kate,
Actually, I said it can be “fun” to “speculate on” cause and effect in the quality scoring system.
Lots of questions and some mind maps about quality score:
http://www.adwordsmadscientist.com/slap_q_6.php