You have to hand it to marketers for their ability to jump on a trend. In fact, it’s one of the core strengths of SEM — the ability to very quickly show ads for hot searches that may relate to your product line. It is interesting to me how companies attempt to capitalize on pop culture trends.
Example: the recent scuttlebutt over Tiger Woods and speculation over what the heck actually happened. All my years of search experience tell me that search traffic around his name has skyrocketed. I don’t need to check the hard data (though I did, and searches for Woods are volcanic), I just know that human nature plays itself out on a search engine. We may all say we don’t like gossip, but search data says otherwise. We are addicted to gossip.
We could argue that Tiger Woods is entitled to his privacy. Without a doubt, I agree. What I’m watching is the search traffic and what effects its causing. All of those golf companies that bid on “Tiger Woods” as a keyword to help sell golf equipment have probably seen impressions increase many times over. In fact, right now may not be the best time to advertise with “Tiger Woods” related terms since most of the searches are no longer golf related.
Which is why I find it interesting who is still advertising on Tiger Woods’ name. Namely eBay.
eBay ad for Tiger Woods. Screenshot taken on Dec 1, at 10:30AM.
What exactly is eBay selling? Clearly they, or whomever runs their SEM campaign, is not paying attention. It appears to me, Tiger Woods is for sale on eBay. eBay is not in the gossip business. The ROI on that ad has to be zero.
Poor word choice, poor execution, poor timing, poor marketing.
You must log in to post a comment.