I saw another post on SEMgeek.com that caught my attention, that declares the impending doom of content match because of its poor performance and because of advertisers wising up to its pitfalls. While I completely agree that content match can be very problematic, at the same time there are plenty of companies and advertisers using content match to effectively drive conversions. Surely content match involves more active management than traditional search and it requires more comprehensive and forward looking setup as well. On the same note, content match will NEVER perform as well as traditional search, but if done well it will drive incremental traffic and conversions. I think it is inherently flawed to even compare the two; it's similar to trying to compared brand oriented TV commercials to DRTV and expect similar CPA results. It will never happen, period!

What content match does do, however, is expand the audience, It increases the reach of any search campaign, so if you've maxed out the reach of your traditional search and you have incremental dollars to drive conversions, then trying content match and measuring it against a different standard can increase your conversion pool. A comparable media is banner ads, and the intent should be thought of similarly as well. You're placing an ad near relevant content and trying to intercept that consumer. You're not serving their express interest in a subject that they were actively seeking, you're trying to take them away from what they were doing and buy your products or download your white paper. Thinking of content match this way illustrates one of the obvious reasons why Google expanded into display ads within the content network that function like content match... and they're showing strong performance and besting traditional display for some efforts.

On the other hand, I do agree that the way content match is handled by Google and Yahoo! is a bit underhanded, and they certainly do a poor job explaining what it is and the efficacy behind it. It is not something that the untrained search novice should try on a whim, it's something that should be strategically approached and cautiously monitored. I also agree that defaulting content match to ON is not exactly consumer friendly, and no doubt scares off many search newbies when their first search campaigns fail and they don't understand why.

The key to search, content match and all other advertising and traffic driving activities is to create a strategy, measure the performance ruthlessly and to optimize the hell out of it. If it doesn't work then don't do it, but never assume a whole category of media like content match is not going to work without testing it.