Contextual Local Ads - Not Quite There Yet

Quick – where’s Beacon?

If you’re coming up with multiple answers, you’re not alone. So are local Google AdSense advertisers, and as a result, contextual ads are all out of context. Ads for Beacon-related things spanning the country (literally) from Boston to San Francisco accompanied an e-mail from a friend who hails from Beacon, NY.

This problem, of course, is hardly limited to Google. It is indicative of local advertisers who are newer to AdSense — and in all likelihood, taking a more scattershot, DIY approach to buying and managing keywords than more experienced advertisers are.

So what’s the secret to teaching newbie search advertisers about concepts such as negative match? Should such feature be baked more prominently into account management software?

Local advertising is burgeoning, but for it to really take off and soar, a lot of really complex issues will have to come down to earth and be super-simplified.