Does anyone have any idea why a company without any products to sell might be using Google adwords to advertise? I saw the image to the right on my blog the other day.

Here’s some potential ideas I came up with:

1. They’re trying to get even more research collaborations (but I would think anyone in the business would know about them already).
2. They want to attract potential employees (although the ad doesn’t say anything about them hiring)
3. They want to get people interested in their stock (too bad they didn’t know I’d give them all this free publicity).
4. They got some “free” adwords dollars with their website hosting package, so why not use them?

My guess is that it’s the 3rd one but I’m not sure it’s a good use of investors’ funds. Maybe it’s the scientist in me, but I think using the money from your IPO on lab supplies (and therefore developing products) would probably be a better way to drive demand for your stock than trying to increase investors’ knowledge of your company/stock.  I heard from a reader that they also had an ad in Science Magazine pre-IPO, so maybe this ad campaign is left over from that campaign.  I don’t know why, but pre-IPO advertisements seems less scummy than post-IPO ads.

I have an e-mail into investor relations to try to find out the real reason for them spending money on advertisements. I’ll let you know if I hear anything back.

Filed under: Rosetta Genomics (ROSG)