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Very interesting article in Adage this morning: Google Lures Local Advertisers by Subverting Its Own Search Policies.

I’m sure everyone will be focused on the “local search” and click-to-call part of the equation but to me there’s something more intriguing in the equation. Flat fee click. Very intriguing indeed.

For the longest time, I’ve been left scratching my head as it seems to me that there’s a whole lot of money being left on the table for a number of relevant searches.

Money In The Bank

Moreover, for larger brands, there is often the issue of ad score quality and relevance primarily because the brand focus of “traditional” advertising is typically solutions (Get a better quality of life) or brand message (You deserve something today) focused. These are not key drivers for search or for relevance.

Flat fee clicks would seem to me to be a way to solve that. Hello Mr. X, you have a product, we have a sizeable amount of search volume that we’d like to talk to you about and we’d like to offer it to you at the low, low rate of X for Y clicks.

Such a proposal would of course involve human interaction. Let’s call it sales, A salesforce.

They’ve already changed the model at the low end, why not apply it to the very high end. Trust me, Google knows where the gaps are in their model. They have to know there’s money left on the table.

This would solve that.

Yahoo… Bing… Are you listening?

Hmmmm.

Have a good one.

~ S