Online marketing sounds relatively simple: create a campaign, find your audience target, and pay the bill. Then, sit back and wait for the customers to show up and buy your products. In some cases, it works fine. The marketing team might go back in and tweak the target audience but could already see results in the checkout area. Unfortunately, online marketing is also a minefield of “gotchas,” which can damage or destroy a valuable advertising campaign. Misreading the rules, unknowingly violating guidelines, and making campaign errors are just a few examples. You’ll find your Google Ads is full of gotchas like keyword misfires and pricey PPC conversions. There are plenty of opportunities to sidetrack an ROI marketing strategy. That’s why I update my Google Ads (AdWords) workbook yearly. Internet marketing is constantly changing, and so do the rules. I’ve spent several decades helping people navigate digital marketing for their businesses. And that includes knowing how to avoid the gotchas. What was true for online marketing two years ago is different today. And it will be different a year from now. Lawyers, for example, looking for ads experts who are aware of what remarketing is, and how to use it, for example, might “know the question” but be left blank “for the answer.” While legitimate marketers seek to boost conversions online, other not so honest marketers are also working to take advantage and make money. Whether it’s to defend a client from marketing fraud or defend a client from losing money due to marketing fraud, my skill is digging deep to reveal the facts. Win or Lose, Google is still the #1 in Digital Marketing Platforms Google Ads can be tricky, but big and small businesses rely on the platform to help sell their products. When a company gets caught up in a legal argument around digital marketing practices, it will need an expert witness who understands the Google Ads remarketing and retargeting processes. The best expert witness can help a lawyer get to the facts and then explain it to a jury in a simple and straightforward manner. Because if people aren’t familiar with the digital marketing industry, the facts can be perplexing. And if a jury understands the evidence, that will be a big benefit to a legal team. No one is immune to a digital media lawsuit. Even Google can get caught up in deceptive advertising strategies. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed lawsuits against Google and iHeartMedia for misleading endorsements (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/11/ftc-states-sue-google-iheartmedia-deceptive-ads-promoting-pixel-4-smartphone). And the Department of Justice has also filed several antitrust lawsuits against Google. And whether the behemoth wins or loses, its expansive web of internet marketing platforms will win or lose too. Here is an article from Search Engine Land explaining the impact these antitrust lawsuits may have on the businesses’ marketing environment: https://searchengineland.com/how-the-google-antitrust-lawsuit-can-impact-advertisers-433006 I’ve seen the evolution of Google since it was a baby search engine. And I know the landscape of the Google Display Network or GDN. For instance, YouTube, Blogger, and Gmail are all part of the GDN. Yet Facebook and Instagram are social networks are a bit different. One of the main issues I’ve testified on is trademark infringement cases. Businesses selling used items like furniture or watches may use brand names in advertising. But if they don’t have approval from those brands, they could be accused of online trademark infringement. I discuss this and the impact of restricted keywords in ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWN25F2FKI0&t=463s. Lawyers Need a Trustworthy Digital Forensics Expert Witness to Get the Point Across I tell my students at Stanford Continuing Studies and clients that the first principle of using advertising to make money is not to waste money on advertising. This means spreading awareness on all the online advertising options and how to avoid the pricey gotchas around retargeting and remarketing digital media. Helping others navigate the online marketing landscape has also built a trustworthy reputation as an expert in digital media and internet marketing. If an attorney reaches out to me and explains what they need for a case, they can trust my response. If I can help them achieve their objectives, I’ll say yes. If they can’t benefit from my efforts, I’ll explain why. If you know an attorney looking for an expert witness for remarketing ads and other SEO cases, they can contact me to talk about it (https://www.jasonmcdonald.org/about/).
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