Google seems to be testing a new ad algorithm in their paid search results. I noticed these “related to” keywords and ads today in a search for “ad tech”.
It appears that when there are less than a full block of advertisers bidding on a particular term, Google is trying to serve additional ads from other advertisers based on what it deems “relevant” to that search. As you can see from this screen shot, the relevancy is fairly loose.
I expect these related to search ads might have a detrimental impact on the impression rate and thus the CTR of ones campaigns. Follow that theory through and it should also have a negative impact on the quality score for a campaign.
Here is an official word from a Google rep, via Searchengineland.com
