Even though this is a very sad story to hear that one of our most beloved actors has been diagnosed with cancer, I was a little surprised by the move of AARP to use PPC to drive awareness to an exclusive interview with Douglas’ battle with Stage IV throat cancer. However, I was more surprised they appeared to ignore Google and chose Yahoo/Bing as their search engine of choice. The reason why this is significant, is the fact that Google would provide a wider audience and more awareness about the interview. But when looking at all areas of Search Marketing, I am happy to see that AARP and others talking about the Actor’s battle with cancer are using everything from Image Search Optimization, PPC, SEO and Social Networks
Trying to Understand the Strategy
Now, since this PPC Strategy does not have an “actual” conversion metric, I do so see some important metrics to test the performance. For example:
- Clicks/Pageviews
- Social Network participation
- Increased visibility for other areas of the AARP website
- Banner Ad Revenue
The Bottom-line:
This is a very smart move by AARP to use PPC to drive awareness to this story, especially with the timing of the new Wall Street Movie in theaters to capitalize on the additional buzz of the actor’s name. This just shows that PPC is not always being used as a vehicle to drive qualified traffic and measuring conversion results. In terms of the end result, the best outcome would be a Cancer Free Michael Douglas and another movie about Gordon Gekko.
