This is actually one of the first articles about Adwords that I’ve read in a major news source that is coherent and logical. They even try to understand the quality score. Props to the NY Times.
Even more entertaining, the employees they chose to interview sound like characters from a spy novel.
Mr. Fox
Mr. Fox and his “ads quality” team can also quickly see whether something is working particularly well. His group’s mission, to constantly fine-tune Google’s ad delivery system, has one overriding objective: show users only the ads they are most likely to be interested in and click on.
Mr. Hal Varian (what a great math name)
“I wouldn’t quite go so far as to say we are recession-proof,” said Hal R. Varian, Google’s chief economist. “But we are recession-resistant.”
There are other interesting tidbits in this article from a PPC analyst point of view, but nothing boils down the entire thing quite like this one:
Quality scores work as an incentive to advertisers to improve their ads, which benefits users and, in turn, benefits Google, Mr. Fox said.