Q&A - Why & how do I separate content vs search information in AdWords Reporting?
September 9, 2008
At times I can be a lone voice speaking about the effectiveness of the content network. As with all marketing (and most decisions), it’s not that the content network is inherently bad or good (and the same can be said for search). It’s a distribution channel that needs to be treated differently than other channels.
Differences between search and content
The engagement process is different from search vs content. Search is about an active consumer looking for information. Content is about advertising products or services next to content where the subject is related to your offer.
I’ve written an extensive article at Search Engine Land about this topic: Search Ads & Contextual Ads Are Different! You Need To Treat Them Separately. Please read the article, it will explain in depth about the two types of networks.
Why treat them separately?
The above article also goes into why to treat them separately. To recap, since they are so different, the stats of one network have no bearing on the stats of the other network. You may have a landing page with a 10% conversion rate for content, and that same landing page just does not work on the search network. Conversely, you may have very specific pages for search and more general product and informational pages for the content network. It all goes back to assessing your goals.
How to view search only Search or Content stats
When you run a report in AdWords, in the Advanced Settings there is a label for ‘filter your results’. When you click on this, you can choose to see only content or only search based information.
When you run reports that only show you search or content, suddenly your account statistics will become more clear. Remember, there are some stats that matter significantly less for content (CTR, conversion rate) that are more applicable to search. Where some stats, such as cost per conversion is one of the top statistics to analyze on the content network.
More Information:
- How to optimize a contextual campaign
- Google suggestions on the content network
- Content network and reports
Q&A: Does the content network follow location targeting rules?
September 4, 2008
I’m trying something new to see your reaction. I receive a lot of questions via email about PPC; in fact more than I can ever hope to answer. Some of them are much more popular than others - so I thought I’d try blogging the answers to various questions.
If you have a question, feel free to contact us with the ‘PPC Question’ subject.
Today’s question comes from an AdWords seminar attendee (don’t worry, I’m keeping the questioners anonymous) and concerns how location targeting and the content network work together on AdWords.
Location Targeting Overview
First a quick word about location targeting. When you choose a region, Google shows ads based upon someone being in that region or using geographic keywords which would show the intent to find information within that region.
For example, if you were targeting Chicago with the keyword hotel. Your ad could show in two situations. First, someone searched for hotel within the Chicago metro. The second way is someone searched for Chicago hotel.
In the first instance, the user being located inside the metro, this is an easy decision - location targeting equals user’s location and the ad is shown.
In the second instance, the assumption being made is that if someone is explicitly looking for information within a metro, then their location does not matter as their intent is to find information within that metro.
Hopefully that makes sense. If not, please comment or contact me and I’ll do a full post on the two location targeting options.
Content Network & Location Targeting
The content network follows all the rules set at the campaign level, and one of those is location targeting. So, in that instance the quick answer to the question is ‘yes, the content network displays ads based upon location targeting settings’.
However, there is also a slightly more ambiguous answer. The content network scans a page to find what the page is about to best serve ads. Therefore, if you consider the second instance above - someone looking for information within a geography, then it stands to reason that sometimes that may come into play in showing ads on the content network.
Therefore, if someone is reading a geographically based article, say about Chicago hotels, they may still see ads for Chicago hotels even though they are outside of that region.
If someone is reading an article about hotels in general, and they aren’t located in our example city Chicago, then they would not see the advertiser’s Chicago location targeted ad.
The Quick Answer
Don’t you love this is at the bottom of the post?
The content network follows all campaign setting rules.
Location targeting is a campaign setting rule.
If someone is within your target geography reading an article that corresponds to your AdGroup theme, then your ads can be shown.
If someone is outside your target geography reading an article that corresponds to your AdGroup theme and the article is about the geography your are targeting, your ads can show.
If someone is outside your geography and the article does not include your geography, then your ads will not show.
Some Suggestions from Google About the Content Network
February 3, 2008
I recently had a long conversation with Google (including the content PM) about the content network.
Here are a few suggestions from Google about the content network (most of these should not surprise anyone):
- Only the first 50 words in an AdGroup are used to determine its theme
- When an AdGroup has a large keyword list, Google’s matching isn’t as good and can get confused
- If an AdGroup is only shown on content, then it can be very useful to use more general words
- All keywords are treated as broadmatch when matching the AdGroup’s theme for content matching
- The Google recommended content bid is usually 75% of the search bid
- The typical content CPA (which I’m not sure if I can share so no numbers) is not significantly different (less than 10%) from search and content
- Of course, this is significantly impacted by bidding content and search differently
- It can be very useful to use site targeting with CPC bidding for ensuring your ads are shown on the highest converting content match websites
Content match resources:
- Search Ads & Contextual Ads Are Different! You Need To Treat Them Separately
- How to optimize a contextual search advertising campaign
- Block low quality traffic
- Peak behind the curtain to see to learn what AdSense sites are doing for you
- About smart pricing
On a side note, I finally responded to the comments about quality score and exact match impressions.
Combat Click Fraud By Blocking Low Quality Traffic
August 7, 2007
My latest article: Combat Click Fraud By Blocking Low Quality Traffic was published at Search Engine Land today.
Learn:
- How to block your ads from showing in certain countries
- How to block competitors from clicking on your ads
- See which content network sites are sending you traffic
- How to keep yourself from showing for keyword searches
- How to block content network sites
- Determine how many clicks you did not pay for
- Next steps…
It’s a bit of a follow-up to Content Network Optimization; but instead of focusing on how to optimize for the content network - it’s more about how to block low quality traffic (search and contextual) from the search engines.
enjoy.
How to Optimize a Contextual Advertising Campaign
July 13, 2007
My latest article on Search Engine Land is now out that goes into depth about contextual optimization:
The major pay per click engines, such as Google and Yahoo, include two different types of distribution: On their own search engine result pages, and on content pages elsewhere on the web. These two types of advertising, while often lumped together under the pay-per-click (PPC) label, are very different. Advertiser’s ability to control these networks and consumer’s interaction with these networks are completely different. Hence, they should be treated as completely separate types of distribution.
Often contextual advertising gets a (sometimes undeserved) bad rap. There are techniques that you can use to have a very effective contextual ad campaign.
Enjoy the entire article on SEL.
If you’re showing contextual ads on your site - Do Not Block these Bots
April 23, 2007
Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have bots that belong to their contextual ad programs.
These bots spider web pages to understand what the page is about so they can match appropriate advertising.
If any publishers are blocking these bots they will keep themselves from having the proper (or in some cases, any) ads show on their website.
Block these bots (if you’re showing contextual ads on your site) and you will lose money.
The useragents not to block:
Mediapartners-Google
MSNPTC
YahooYSMcm
Microsoft adCenter to Launch Contextual Program This Fall
August 2, 2006
Microsoft plans to launch their own contextual program this fall. It will be a US only invite pilot, however, one can request to be invited. What’s going to be interesting to see is how many features they plan on porting into contextual. For instance, they plan on supporting demographic targeting.
Read more
Increasing the Effectiveness of AdSense Ads through Section Targeting
December 13, 2005
One of the largest problems with AdSense is often the ads are irrelevant to your content.
This is especially true of blogs where the ads might be about blogging, or the rest of your navigation, and not about the specific topic on that page.
The more relevant an ad is to that exact topic, the higher the relevancy to your reader. The higher the relevancy to your reader - the higher the CTR (click through rate).
Alternately, the worse the targeting is, the lower Read more
Tracking AdSense with Google Analytics
November 24, 2005
Aaron has a post about tracking AdSense click throughs with Google’s Urchin Analytics.
I haven’t tested it yet, it’s on the list of things todo. If someone gets a chance to see exactly how it works, and if it’s hackable to tracking other types of exit clicks (banners, YPN, etc), please let me know.
Digital point is also working on one, but doesn’t seem to work with Mozilla.
Google Pushing Firefox
November 7, 2005
The Google AdSense blog just published the new details on the AdSense referral program.
Users who sign up for AdSense through your referral button will learn about a great product, and you’ll have a new way to generate revenue - $100 when each user you refer first earns $100.
There are a large number of banners that can be added to a website, including some that are not the usual AdSense size blocks.
Pretty simple information, and it was very much expected.
The part I didn’t expect was that Google is also paying $1 for every Firefox user who installs the Google Firefox toolbar.
Again, quite a few different banner sizes, some as small as buttons.
No text links for either program - only images, which seems out of character with Google’s fascination with everything text, and slow adoption of images overall.
The real question though is: Why is Google giving away this money?
- Are they recommending firefox?
- Are firefox users finding better plug-ins and not using the toolbar?
- Are firefox users not giving Google all the data it collects through the toolbar, and they need a higher firefox penetration?
It’s interesting to see Google not only push a browser and toolbar, but to pay for referrals.
If you’re willing to pay for something, you usually get something in return.
- Is it uses?
- Or data collection?
Personally, I uninstalled every Google product after both the GMail notifier and the last Google Toolbar updated itself on my machines without my permission. I consider this a security breach, and someone else trying to control my software.
It will be interesting to see what else Google starts paying for in the future. How about AdWords account referrals?
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