Should I DKI?

Posted on Oct 22, 2007 by David
One of PPC’s most interesting features is Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI), which lets you automatically insert the keyword phrase users search for into your PPC ads. DKI is a good tool to use to easily get ads that may stand out; keyword phrases searched for always appear in bold text in PPC ads. However, the potential to abuse this feature could actually hurt your quality score if you’re not careful.

As far as I can see, DKI tends to make some people uneasy. There are those who are afraid of it because it can be seen as a little bit too easy. No need to think too much about ad copy, just throw the DKI tags into your ads and you’ve got instant quality! Just the thought sends a shudder down the spine of any Paid Search professional, envisioning a flood of terrible PPC ads that simultaneously drive up cost AND makes the medium look bad. So afraid of rocking the quality score boat they avoid it.

For me though, getting keywords to appear in their corresponding ads has always been important. DKI seemed like a good tool to try to make use of. So for four weeks, I ran one of our AdWords campaigns using DKI. The test was simple, I just created copies of every ad in the 200 keyword campaign, and inserted {KeyWord: } tags into the title of each copy. It may not have been subtle, but it helped to get the data I needed. The results were interesting:
 
 

Overall

DKI

No DKI

CPC

$0.83

$0.81

$0.85

CTR

3.51%

3.94%

3.12

OK, below average Cost Per Click and above average Click Through Rate. Maybe not by much, and maybe not the most scientifically formulated test, but it was definitely good enough number for me to pursue it further. I’ve since incorporated DKI into my campaigns further and plan on continuing to track successes and failures.

I’d recommend running a similar test on your own campaign. It’s easy to duplicate ads using the AdWords Editor desktop application, so testing is not a problem. Don’t worry about hurting quality score due to ad history; your old ad remains while the new one is running and building it’s own history. So it’s not time consuming to set up or track. No reason to not give it a try.

Widespread use of DKI in order to “auto-pilot” writing your ads can be dangerous. Just imagine endless PPC users putting out ads similar to the ones that used to run for EBay. Like every tool Google provides it has to be used intelligently in order to be used effectively. Misspelled keywords and singular/plural variations are the perfect examples of good DKI usage. No need to write duplicate ads when you can automatically insert “mortgages” or “morgage” in place of “mortgage.” Synonyms are the perfect candidate for DKI as well. Group those keywords together and use DKI to get that bold text in the ad for every search. You can go so far as to use DKI with keywords that share the same theme. Keeping your keywords, ads, and landing pages thematically grouped is key when trying to get your quality score up, so use DKI to help.

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This post is in: AdCenter , AdWords , PPC Advertising , Yahoo!

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Comments

This was extremely informative, thanks for keeping me up to date with this information. I'll be sure to check back again for new updates. Posted by: Tony Almeida  [URL] - Nov 21, 2008 7:27 AM

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