Google Launches AdWords Comparisson Ads. A.K.A LEAD GEN INDUSTRY KILLER

• Google wrote this fluffy piece about an hour ago regarding their launch of AdWords Comparitive Ads. Don’t be fooled, beware. Google describes it as:

“Today we’re excited to begin testing a new feature of AdWords called AdWords Comparison Ads, which lets users compare multiple, relevant offers more easily. Comparison Ads is part of our continuing effort to make ads more relevant and useful to our users and to help you, our advertisers, reach the people who are most interested in your products and services.

AdWords uses a host of targeting and relevancy signals to determine the best ads for each query. However, sometimes a user’s query doesn’t provide enough information for us to confidently predict what they want. Take, for example, users who search for “mortgage.” Do they want a new home loan or a refinance? Do they want a fixed rate or an adjustable rate loan? Comparison Ads improves the ad experience on Google.com by letting users specify exactly what they are looking for and helping them quickly compare relevant offers side by side.

With Comparison Ads, you can also target your offers at a more granular level, leading to more valuable, qualified leads. To see how it works, let’s use our mortgage example. Users searching for “mortgage” on Google.com may see a promotion from Comparison Ads prompting them to select the type of loan they are looking for and to compare various rates”

• Don’t be fooled. This is Google’s soft way of saying, “We recognize how many millions of dollars we have been generating for lead generation companies through our engine. Now it’s our turn”. Google is going to attack the mortgage industry first as you can see by the screenshot below, which shows an example of Google comparing mortgage rates from different lenders they have now partnered with. Such a service cuts out major players in this industry such as Lending Tree, who I’m sure you have all heard of. They have been in a heated lawsuit with Google moving into this space since this time last year, when I first heard of this bold attempt. Just how big is this for Google? Well, I can’t say for the mortgage industry because it is not my expertise, but I can give you a comparative example if  Google were to jump into an industry just as powerful, Insurance. NetQuote, one of the industry leaders in providing leads to qualified insurance agents across the country, buys consumer traffic off of Google in hopes that they will fill out one of their forms and that information is then sold off to brokers. NetQuote sells each lead to 5 different agents for $15 a pop. They are generating at or over $100M in revenue a year from lead generation. Google can slip right in and generate this business right away at a fraction of the cost (NetQuote’s biggest expense besides employees is to pay Google). So, now we have mortgage, insurance and I’m sure just around the corner: comparison travel, dentists, doctors, colleges, etc. Pretty much any lead gen driver in the industry right now has something to fear, so long as they are using Google as a major platform to drive their business of buying traffic and reselling forms. No one is safe anymore.

Tagged as: comparitive ads, Google