Strange Ad Copy for Google Adwords

Today I came across an absolutely strange Adwords ad in my Gmail interface. I am absolutely clueless why would any advertiser put up an ad like that and even if they do how can the Adwords editorial team approve such an ad copy. On top of my Gmail inbox the Adwords ad displayed as

Text ad – www.url.com – Desc1 Desc2


Click on Image to Enlarge

Just to satisfy my curiosity I clicked on the ad to find that it leads to a page that apparently doesn’t exist, however, I was even more surprised by the fact that the landing page URL is completely tagged to keep a tab on the performance of the campaign, which indicates that the person who has set up the campaign definitely knows a bit or two about Adwords and PPC

Landing Page:
http://www.test.0000000184.com/path?keywords=keyword&creative=3849139695&adGroup=7711

While the ad copy mostly complies to the Google Editorial policy except for the fact that the landing page URL isn’t working ( and that should get the ad disabled ) it is rather strange for any company to put up an ad like that.

There are just two possibilities that clicks my mind on this..

a) The ad is run by Google themselves to test any internal feature or gather any specific user behavior data ( by passing the editorial policy is not an issue for them)

b)Any major agency is running these ads for the purpose of finding out any user behavior data or calculating some other competitive matrix like minimum cpc, ctr or minimum impressions on specific keywords etc. However, in this case I am not sure how they have been able to bypass the Adwords editorial policy.

If you have any other ideas about the possible reasons for such an ad copy please do mention in the comments.

Some other posts on Adwords:

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Check out the About SRC Page for more details about Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury.

3 Comments to “Strange Ad Copy for Google Adwords”

  1. LORD says:

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  2. bldtraffic says:

    Greetings SEO Kolkata… I am surprised with your post! Usually you are right on with your analysis and opinion but this time I believe you missed the mark…

    Your first clue should have been “test”. As a long-time Adwords and Adsense client, I have only seen that string once before… during the presentation at a Google-sponsored event. It was pointed out that once in a great while these “control” ads may appear…and that is all that they are…

    You are entitled to one mistake, right?

    JJH
    http://www.AMBRD.com

  3. seo-kolkata says:

    Thanks for pointing that bldtraffic ( what’s your name btw ?)

    well, as I mentioned in the post that it did strike me that it might be a test that Google is doing – similar to what you mentioned as “control” ads but the other possibility about some major agency testing the waters did strike me because I know of at least two agencies who do this type of experiments with stupid ads but gains fantastic insights from the overall campaign.

    “Control” ads – are they suppose to mean anything more than test ads, – honestly am new to this term. any insight would be highly appreciated.

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