For those who are in online marketing, specifically SEM, face the challenge of delivery targeted ads to the right audience at the right time for the right product. All this in hopes of driving traffic and converting that user for revenue of some sort. But for some companies, this holiday season calls for a higher cause.
Many online shopping sites appear to be promoting services and products of a different nature. Have our morals as a society gone to all time low levels (perhaps reflecting stock market), that companies are beginning to auction off women for cheap prices? GASP!!
Even if we were a society of no morals, how on earth did they decide to come up with such ads? (Ok I’m stating the obvious to some. For those who understand PPC, they probably got it with some dynamic keyword insertion or some other form of “too smart” matching)
Imagine what my mom would say if she saw that! I can just hear it now. “DEREK!!! Is this the type of work you do! SELLING CHEAP WOMEN!??!! I told you to get a real job, not this internet thing!” - Whew, at least I can tell my mom that those are not the companies I work for. 
I was raised to treasure life values and spirituality. So sorry Bizrate and Smarter, cheap women is not my cup of tea. There’s more to life than that - we’re talking about the very topic that churches around the world preach every Sunday - or Wednesdays, or whatever day they have service. Yup, you guessed it - Eternal Life!
For those people who have been waking up every Sunday at 6am to get ready for church, living life to their best of morals and avoiding the debaucheries of life, there’s good news! And I don’t mean the “Good News” that you hear about from Father John. Now you can sleep in on Sundays and go to church “IF” you have time…because: Shopzilla and Yahoo! have decided to make shopping for Eternal Life EASY! Yes, You can have it all! And the best part - low prices!
Ok, now that I’ve probably pissed off the SEM teams - it’s time to talk about more serious stuff.
More Serious Stuff
This for of niche marketing strategy does bring up questions, intrigue and possibly excitement. I wonder what the CTR and ROI are for these types of products. How much money was wasted on traffic from these ads? I dare not imagine.
Over the years in search, I’ve come across many newbie mistakes and mismanagement of marketing campaigns. I’ve seen my fair share, shit, I’ve even had some of this fubars myself during my early years of search marketing. And since we’re entering holiday shopping season, I ask myself if these types of mistakes can be justified?
Big companies with millions of words to manage tend to fall into this trap of automation. Ebay was a big culprit of this years ago - maybe still a little now, but when it comes to managing SEM at large scale it requires more than automation and leaving it to chance.
Lessons to Learn
Mis-targeted ads is nothing new. And if you do enough searches you will find many more examples like the ones above. Probably not so much for smaller campaigns, but the enterprise campaigns can sometimes put a smile on your face.
Here are a few things to note (obvious or not):
- Automation has its limitations
- Audit your ads (develop a system or manually)
- Stick with what works/what you know
- Assign accountability (assuming it is blurry)
- Don’t try to play god!!! (ok just kidding!)
And for my Christmas Wish
Now, Shopzilla.com, Bizrate.com, Yahoo! Shopping (you know I love you guys!) and Smarter.com -do you offer bulk discounts? 
I love your sites - so take this with a grain of salt - and feel free to yell at me
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