MAIN ROADS ADVERTISING STRIKES AGAIN

Main Roads continues to spend spend spend on advertising for the ROE 8 Highway extension which is planned to destroy the Beeliar Wetlands, also know as Bibra Lake and North Lake. Recently, physical advertisements have popped up in Shopping Centres, with social media spreading the word quickly and successfully forcing the removal of all ads within 24 hours of their placement. Other ads have recently been spotted on Facebook, with a number of people voicing their concerns by ultimately flagging those ads, and since then, few have been seen.

Now it seems Main Roads have moved on to Google Adwords, a service by Google in which companies can pay for an ad that puts their webpage to the top of the search results - when a user does a search on that particular subject, that company is then charged for that 'click'. This occurs for every click that ad receives and the cost per click counts down a budget set by the company who placed the ad until the budget for that day (or month) is met and the ad is removed until the next day.


Before we move on, you can read HERE for a bit more info on Google Adwords

Here is the AD

Now if you quickly do a bit of messing around on Google Adwords, you can do a bit of math - these are just examples, and in no way say with any certainty that this is how much Main Roads is spending, it is just to get a basic idea of how this service works. It is believed that for the size of the ad in question, Main Roads would be spending considerably more than these examples here, for less clicks.

As I said earlier, companies using Adwords can set a monthly (or daily) budget for their ad, which gives them an approximate on the amount of clicks the ad can receive before the budget is met and the ad is removed. They do this so you don't end up with a massive bill at the end of the month if your paid ad is a particularly successful one.

If the power of social media came together again and clicked that ad enough times to meet that ads budget, it would actually disappear! What a fun little experiment that could be, right? RIGHT?

Google Adwords is nothing new - you will see these when searching for almost any product or service online - but I can't imagine many road infrastructure projects need this form of marketing. This can be a costly service, so it begs the question, how much is Main Roads spending on this round of advertisements, and why? If this Road was such a good idea, accepted by all, or even a majority, would they even bother spending the money at all? Why is there such a need to sell this road, at what is starting to look like any cost?

The mess that is the Roe 8 / Perth Freight Link seems to know no bounds.