Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Writing the Two Types of Ads

Here's a fun thought experiment: Imagine that it's a lazy Sunday morning in 1988, and you're at home when a water pipe bursts in your kitchen. Water is pouring out onto the floor so fast you fear for your collection of vintage Danelectro guitars and Marshall amps. You rush to the Yellow Pages (remember those?) and frantically thumb to the P section, briefly consider ordering pizza, and then remember what you're doing and find the listings for plumbers. The first listing you see includes a phone number, service area, weekend hours, license number, and a 30-minute emergency arrival guarantee. What do you do? Dial the number as fast as you can.

Now for a completely different scenario: It's a lazy Sunday morning in 1988, and you're at home browsing the sports section of the newspaper (remember those?). As you scan an article about the LA Dodgers playoff chances, you notice an ad for a local plumber. The ad looks like a Yellow Pages listing, including a phone number, service area, weekend hours, and so on. Do you jump off the couch, run to the phone, and dial that number? Of course not. You totally ignore the ad and return to the fascinating world of Major League Baseball.

How is it possible, then, that the same ad could perform so well in the first scenario and so poorly in the second? Easy; the burst pipe put the prospect in the mindset of searcher, who was actively looking for what the business provided. The second scenario involved an interruption of ...