Buy & Sell Slaves on eBay…or dynamic keyword insertion gone wild

eBay and Google have been getting some attention lately after someone in the UK noticed that a search on Google for “African slaves” served up a search results page that included an ad from eBay for “African slaves”. Is this a case of eBay and Google being evil? No, it’s a case of sloppy dynamic keyword insertion (DKI). And eBay doesn’t restrict its poor ad management to just Google. Take, for example, this screenshot from a search originating in Canada for “slaves” on Bing, taken this morning. Apparently eBay has “Fantastic prices on Slaves. Buy & Sell today”. OK, even with our current government I’m pretty sure that’s still illegal in Canada.

Here’s another DKI fail on Google Canada this morning, courtesy of eBay: “Looking for Bear Parts. Find exactly what you want today”. Who needs the black market when you have eBay doing all the work for you?

So how did these ads happen? The answer lies in the ad creation technique known as Dynamic Keyword Insertion, which allows Google, Yahoo, and Bing to pull the keyword matched to the entered search query into the ad copy automatically. DKI is designed to increase the relevancy of the ad and improve hit bolding to increase the potential CTR of the text advertisement. The end result is higher ad relevancy, improved CTR, better quality score and subsequently higher ROAS… at least in theory. Dynamic keyword insertion can be a great time savings tool, but as witnessed can also be very dangerous when applied in mass campaigns.

Note: Dynamic Keyword Insertion does not add the user’s search query into the ad, but pulls the keyword that the search query is matched to in the Adwords account. In other words, in the Bing example, “slaves” is a term in eBay’s keyword account – they’re bidding on it. If you actually search eBay for “slaves” you get mostly books, movie posters and that sort of thing.

To assist with helping to save some time and frustration (even possibly a lawsuit or just plain embarrassment) here are some tips to assist with dynamic keyword insertion (DKI).
1. Create tight ad groups where only highly related keywords are found within the same ad group.
2. Always read your ad, with each keyword in the copy to ensure that the ad continues to make sense.
3. Use negative keywords to avoid bad matches.
4. Use match types to in cases where they connotation of the keyword can have both literal and alternate meanings.
5. In Yahoo, use alternate keywords to better fit within your dynamic keyword insertion.
6. Description lines are difficult to use DKI within and maintain proper syntax and readability. Title tags are easier.
7. Avoid automated systems for writing ads. Ad copy is vital to your advertising campaign; would you seriously let a system write a TV commercial, design a magazine spread, or a radio ad? If not, why would you entrust an automated system for digital ads?
a. Avoid using keyword tools to add significant numbers of longtail keywords to campaigns when you are using DKI. The keyword suggestion tools can be tempting to hit “add all,” but can really start to interfere with your DKI. Additionally, each keyword should be analyzed to ensure a fit with the intention of the search and the desired action you want them to take.
8. Avoid using DKI on the Content Network. Your content network keyword list should be designed to describe the sites that you are looking to appear on and which content on those sites that would be relevant to your product. Therefore, using DKI on the content network can create some pretty messy ad copy.

When using DKI, here are some syntax guidelines to ensure proper capitalization:
{keyword} – ppc management — all lower case
{Keyword} – Ppc management — 1st world initial caps, all lower case
{KeyWord} – Ppc Management — all words initial caps
{KEYword} – PPC management – 1st word all caps, all other words in lower case (great for acronyms).