How could the EC anti-trust investigation impact on your PPC?
PPC could take a hit if the European Commission (EC) rules against Google as a result of its current anti-trust investigation. Questionnaires have been sent out by the EC to agencies, publishers, and advertisers across Europe in order to gain knowledge about the porting of campaigns from AdWords to other PPC providers. Although response is not mandatory, this action hints to some worrying possibilities.
The EC is suggesting provisions for an add tool which will allow promotions to be transferred with ease to other providers e.g. MSN adCenter.
Using an “add tool” as suggested by the EC to dump data from Google into adCenter or any other ad platform is bad practice & will have a negative impact on campaign results. Other systems such as adCenter have different campaign set ups to that of Google, different consumer user base & also treat search query strings differently. Therefore campaign structures are tailored in order to achieve the best return on investment within various platforms.
Although this topic may evoke a strong reaction the EC’s goal is to create a ‘fair’ market playing field. But the slow grind of the bureaucratic process will not have an effect on the industry anytime soon. The likelihood is that the market will change by the time any action is taken.
As ever we will keep an eye on this for all our clients and act accordingly but I recommend that advertisers watch this space.
Very interesting – the EC does seem to have a history of coming down hard on key technology providers, look at the Microsoft Anti Trust case a few years back.