Is Google Setting Your PPC ROI Expectations?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt was quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald as saying:

It shouldn't matter what Google does with their ads, he argues, so long as the received value, which advertisers can measure, is higher than the price they pay.

Shuman Ghosemajumder tried to make a similar comment on the PPC Auditing and Click fraud Issues panel at SES in Chicago that I sat with on the panel in a room with advertisers who definitely weren’t in the Google fan boy crowd.

The bottom line, as I mentioned in the panel is: "Who is Google to set that expectation?" Who is Google to tell me that the 3% conversion rate should be good enough even if it might have been 4-5% had it not been for click fraud?

Shuman also mentioned (more than once) that Google throws out more clicks then they charge for. Well great...as an advertiser how am I supposed to know that? Except for the email announcing a credit for "low quality" clicks (Google never uses the phrase "click fraud" for crediting you back funds) they hide behind the infamous form letter of how their click fraud teams dont see the activity you questioned as "click fraud".

I suggested that the PPC networks share that information with advertisers so they could see what the PPC networks were doing for them proactively. I doubt we will ever see it though as that would lay out how big of an issue click fraud is and they cant have that.