When your steam cleaner is not a steam cleaner.

Guess how many of these steam cleaners are steam cleaners. It is less than you would think.

Advertisers and agencies are not choosing their SEM keywords the way they used to. They are handing over more of the work to Google and Performance Max. Sometimes that is fine. Sometimes the machine is given bad inputs and the customer is left holding the wrong product.

A conversion still gets counted. The system still gets reinforced. The brand still wears the disappointment.

The average customer does not care which platform made the bad match. They remember the brand experience. That is the real cost.