Lead Paint PPC Influencing Holiday Shopping Trends

The lead paint impact on Pay-Per-Click ads during holiday shopping has been interesting to watch. When the recalls was initially announced in early September, there was little or no competition on keywords such as "lead paint in toys". Even Fisher-Price, the largest toy manufacturer with a recall, did not get into the PPC game until a few months after the initial announcement.

But now try doing a query on "lead paint in toys" on Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask.com. You'll see there's a minimum of 10 advertisers on each search engine. And for the most part, these advertisers "get it". They are manufacturers and distributors of lead paint testing tools, or companies who are selling safe (aka lead paint free) toys this holiday season.

However this wasn't always the case, at the start of the holiday season major retailers ramping-up their toy-related Pay-Per-Click spend seemed to have forgotten to include "lead" as a negative keyword in their accounts. Which might not be a problem, if they weren't using dynamic insertion in their ad text. I wish I'd taken a screen shot because Toys R Us had a great ad, something like - 10% off all the best lead paint toys this holiday season!

Now the instances of advertiser missteps are few and far between. Shopzilla is still struggling a bit on Yahoo! Their "lead paint" ad takes you to a page on the Shopzilla site touting "toy lead in dog supplies" and "toy lead in outdoor games and fun". Can't wait to buy some of those for Fido & the kids this Christmas!