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Why Is it Ok for Ask to Use Google for PPC Arbitrage?
LATEST POSTI see Ask.com ads all the time. Most of the time I ignore them. Today was different because they keyword they were bidding on really stood out. Curiosity got me. I had to click through to see what the destination page looked like.
posted by Matt DeYoungI was searching the keyword “pre-k intelligence test” today. I was surprised to see Ask.com bidding on the keyword. Although seeing Ask.com bids happens often as they try to drive traffic to their content network. I was intrigued by how niche they had gotten with their campaign with this instance though.
Personally I was looking for a way to test the personal learning style of my 3.5 year old. I know that sounds a little over the top, but she’d been fine at her pre-school until about a month ago. All of the sudden she doesn’t want to go. Even to the point of making up excuses the night before. For some kids—like me when I was that age—this is normal because they’re shy, etc. But for my daughter this is a-typical.
Unsure of what Ask.com could have to gain by bidding on my keyword term, I decided to click through. Here’s what the results page looked like on Google.com:
I was even more wide-eyed when I saw the destination page of the Ask PPC ad. They were showing their own set of search results. I realize search engines often partner with each other to display results to their users. And Ask.com has partner with Google in the past, and still does as far as I know.
So now this is a kind of pay-per-click arbitrage situation. Ask bids on a term on the Google network, send the users to their own results and presumably gets ad revenue when the users clicks the paid search SERP. Below is a screenshot of the destination page at Ask (post Google PPC click for the term “pre-k intelligence test”).
I guess this is ok for Ask.com. But I have a real problem with it because Google spends time making life difficult for affiliates to bid on situations like this. Many PPC affiliates create thin content situations where there’s really just garbage content that doesn’t add value, but it still generates money for them.
So the question is how are affiliate different strategies for PPC arbitrate different from what Ask.com is doing Google in this situation?
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Dustin Deyoung
Matt DeYoung