Here is a guest post from Pat Quinn of Big Iron Design, LLC.

Will Google’s New Adsense Policy for Alcohol Ads Increase Manufacturer Spending Online?

Last week Google changed their advertising policy on alcohol to allow ads that promote the sale of hard alcohol and liquor.

Will this new policy encourage the adult beverage industry to spend more of their 2-3 billion dollar annual budgets online? They’re not spending much of it online right now, that’s for sure. According to this 2008 report, the top 12 advertisers in this sector spend less than 2% of their advertising dollars online. More than half of that amount probably goes to their own web sites judging by this chart which breaks down the spending by venue. That amounts to roughly 2 million dollars a month for internet advertising aside from the manufacturer’s own sites. By contrast, they’re spending almost 69 million a month for TV, 50 million a month for Point-of-Sale, and 29 million a month for Sports, Sports Teams and Athletes.

In 2008 Google changed their policy to allow ads that promote the sale of beer, but I’m not seeing a lot of beer ads in my daily surfing, are you? I wonder why. It may be because there are myriad local and state laws regulating this advertising, and the manufacturers are just afraid to go there (yet). But, I don’t really get why there would be regulation differences between running ads online and running them on TV. Certainly the football fans among us are bombarded by them, even on the earliest games (Go Steelers!). Are they afraid kids will see the ads online? Give me a break.

What’s this have to do with domaining? There are hundreds of cocktail names and dozens of generic liquor names, with new drinks being created all the time. Obviously, popular drinks will generate searches because people want to try new things. The CPC and Competition on even many highly searched ones are pretty much rock-bottom, though. I think it goes without saying that most domainers are always on the lookout for any product-related terms with high search numbers. But if the potential advertisers can’t advertise because of restrictions that certainly kills any potential value of these domain names.

So, the question is – will this policy change be enough to drive a few more of those huge advertising dollars to Google, and by extension the owners of these types of domains. I’d love to hear your thoughts, particularly if you have real-world experience in the alcohol names domain (and I don’t mean drunk dialing your ex).

Disclaimer: I own a number of cocktail related names. That’s why this policy change sparked my interest.

I am still a novice when it comes to Google Adwords advertising, but I have been learning for various projects. One such project is DogWalker.com, and I have been actively spending money on keyword buys. I got some solid traffic as a result, although the cost was relatively high – somewhere between $.31 – $1.00 per visitor.Overall, the cost per click I am paying is $0.39.

This morning, I tried a more traditional approach, using offline marketing. I posted an advertisement on Craigslist asking for someone to hand out magnets in Central Park for an hour, from 8am – 9am, as dog owners can have their dogs off leash until 9am.  I know people keep this type of magnet, as I have very few things on my refrigerator, but there’s a 24/7 veterinarian magnet on it. She wished the dog owners a good morning and said something to the affect of “if you ever need a dog walker, please visit DogWalker.com.”

During this hour, the person I hired handed out around 100 magnets or so. The total cost was $15, which was probably generous, since I had about 30 responses. I think I got what I paid for though because her personality was more than I expected. Anyhow, the total cost per interaction was $0.15 – over 50% less than the cost per click on Adwords.

The big differences are:

• Adwords targets people when they need a dog walker
• My Adwords campaign has not simply targeted cities where there are listings, although they should.
• Magnets have more of a lifetime when they’re put on a fridge, and the interaction lets the person know about the site.

What this means to me is that I am going to be doing more magnet hand outs in parks across the city, and I may lower my rate to $10/hour. I am also going to change my targeting on Adwords and focus on dog owners in cities where I have listings. I will also target people looking to find dog walking jobs/work in a separate campaign.

As much as we spend a lot of time online, we can’t forget traditional marketing tactics.

On a separate note, Bruce Marler had a good post about drinking and driving today… be safe this holiday season.