Do you avoid Content Targetted listings?

[Jon12345]

I got a shock today when I was just approved for a Content listing. For my Search listings, I was getting 678 impressions and 13 clicks per day. The new Content Targetted listings are getting 60,000 impressions and 48 clicks per day. So my daily total has jumped up considerably.

What tends to be the quality of Content targetted listings against Search targetted listings? And why the difference, if any?

Jon

[redlion]

Think for a moment about how people search - by typing they are telling the engines, for commerical searches, "I want to buy X".

With content, they click on a link more because it "takes their fancy": they didn't go looking for that product/service.

So, content noramlly has lower conversion rates (occassional exceptions to the rule like products people don't search for because they are new to the market as a concept.)

I keep content campaigns in separate ADGroups to search, with plenty of negative keywords and lower CPCs and daily budgets. Get it right and it works - but for some sectors, they are a sinkhole and I turn them off.

[Tropical Island]

We re-established content ads on our account when Google had the special offer in August & September.

For the first few days we were getting very high CTR and conversions (views of money pages). This dropped off dramatcally as time went on.

This makes sense when you stop to think how content pages are used. If someone has a page on their favorites list to say weather.com and is checking the weather at a resort location the 4 or 5 weeks before their trip then the first few times your ad pops up it would have some interst to them however on subsequent visits not. This will difuse the sucess of your content ads the longer you have them up.

We notice that the number of impressions on some of our content ads is much, much higher than our search impressions. As all our ads tend to be about one subject, more or less, then it makes sense to think that you are running into the same people over and over.

We still are running the content stuff as the cost is not all that high and we are getting some conversions. As the winter season picks up (we're just waiting for a nice blizzard or really hard cold snap up North :-)) and activity increases we will probably pause them to keep monthly costs under control.

[Vegas21]

In my experience the conversion rate from content traffic is lower than search based traffic. But, that's not to say it is unqualified. Depending on the size of your spend, you might want to turn it off in your primary campaign and then launch a new ad group at a lower bid price that uses the same ad and keywords but only runs content and not search ads. This is a good way to participate in both but not at the same price point.

[anallawalla]

I split my campaigns into Content and Search and Search does a lot better than Content and priced accordingly. I have some exceptions where the same term does better for Content than Search.

[freeflight2]

Once you have a campaign with a positive ROI (that's the key!):

- make a copy of your campaign
- set a much lower or the minimum bid price
- enable 'content network'

after 1 week:
- did you make a profit? if yes, increase bidding price, if not cancel this campaign.

[Jon12345]

I've just blown $100 as they just reviewed my keywords. However, I got no prior warning. I really think they should do that so you can monitor your stats rather than waking up and finding you have a Content listing that has resulted in 5 times the number of clicks as the Searches.

Is it easy to copy a Campaign across so I can reduce keyword price?

[redlion]

If you spend enough to have a Google Account Manager, yes - they can send you a copy in a spreadsheet which you can change the AdGroups names on (I add "Content" at the start).

If you don't, I believe you will have to do this manually, copying from one browser window into another. Use power posing for the keywords, URLs, CPCs to speed this up.

[CalArch90]

I find that while search yields better results in terms of ROI, content advertising through Google is still one of the better options out there when compared to alternative advertising options. Overture is solid, Findwhat is decent, beyond that you don't really have many choices. Content advertising through Google is still a thousand times better than what you get from second-third tier search engines.

[skibum]

I avoid content on all campaigns that have expensive keywords. We also suggest all (but a select few) clients avoid content tageting because there are often tons of impressions, low CTR but tons of clicks, and a very small conversion rate.

It does work on occasion but most of the time it doesn't.

[Jon12345]

Thats what I'm finding.

[RedWolf]

I dropped the content ads this spring after not seeing much from them except a lot of clicks. When Google ran their rebate special, I reactivated them, but dropped them again after not recieving a single conversion from content. I never really noticed much difference between my Content average CPC and that for search dispite hearing about all it supposedly having a lower CPC nowadays.

[redlion]

I'd have to agree - I've seen no real difference in CPC between search and content.

However content CAN work; for some clients I use a lot of negative keywords and tighter matching to limit when my ads appear for content (they are separate to search in my accounts).

All depends on what the site promotes / sells, I find..

(Edited due to keyboard incompetence!)

[Nikke]

When marketing the kind of consumer product that the consumers don't really know about already, and thus won't search for, I've found content sites invaluable.

There is always keyword combinations you just can't imagine, and there are a lot of pages out there that might trigger your ad and catch a potential customer. However, they might not act immediately since they weren't actively searching for your product. However, they might come back for more later.

Also, if you are doing AdWords for your own site (as opposed to an affiliate campaign or for a client that pays per conversion), you also have to consider the branding effect. That's YOUR url, you brand, on thousands and thousands of pages.

[redlion]

Good points Nikke - I've also used content for branding and to educate consumers about a product they don't know about and don't search for.

Side point: what are people's experiences with using image ads for content ads on Google?

[eyeinthesky]

I've a scenario I'm not able to solve.

Say I've a bunch of keywords that I want to bid $0.20 for without content-targetting, ie only search results.

At the same time, I want to take advantage of content targetting for this same bunch of keywords but at a lower price of $.10 only.

How can I do this? If I create a separate campaign with the same bunch of keywords to reflect this lower bid, will it work?

Thanks for any replies...

[eWhisper]

Make one campaign with the options search on, content off. Bid higher on this campaign than campaign 2.

In campaign 2, have search off, content on, and bid lower than campaign 1.

Campaign 2 will show some search ads (on Google only - for search partners 1 will always be shown), and if their CTR is high enough, they may replace some of your keywords in campaign 1 (the bid price difference between the two campaigns make a large difference here).

In general, this will have campaign 1 showing for search, and 2 showing for content.

[Jon12345]

Do you really have to have a higher bid if each campaign has different options selected? i.e. #1 has only search, #2 only content. Aren't they then mutually exclusive campaigns where one does not affect the other?

[RedWolf]

Do you really have to have a higher bid if each campaign has different options selected? i.e. #1 has only search, #2 only content. Aren't they then mutually exclusive campaigns where one does not affect the other?

Yes, because an ad will always show on Google. There is no way to turn Google searches off. You can only control search partners (reall ones like AOL, and all those stupid adsense junk searches) and content.

[Jon12345]

Ok. Thought you could turn Searches off but I was wrong!

[warlordbb]

I was under the impression that having Ad Groups in different campaigns targetting the same keywords would run the risk of a no-no that is displaying 2 ads in the same SERP.

I thought the only proper way to have mutually exclusive ads targetting the same keywords was to have them under one campaign, in seperate ad groups and to turn on optimization.

Of course I'm a complete newb at this stuff...

This would only be one of a multitude of misconceptions I have about Adwords :)

[redlion]

To clarify:

Setup two copies of each campaign in your account:

Content_Campaign_Name

Search_Campaign_Name

Under campaign settings, check/uncheck to turn search on and content off (and vice versa) and set different max CPCs.

This way you won't show an ad twice in SEPRs, and can control the CPCs and cost of content separately from search.

Hope that is clear...

[RedWolf]

I was under the impression that having Ad Groups in different campaigns targetting the same keywords would run the risk of a no-no that is displaying 2 ads in the same SERP.
I thought the only proper way to have mutually exclusive ads targetting the same keywords was to have them under one campaign, in seperate ad groups and to turn on optimization.

Unless Google introduces some bug, there is no way to get two ads displayed at once from one account. All ads are in Google searches no matter what, but if a keyword is in multiple places, only one will be displayed. The one chosen is based on the one Google thinks it will get the most money from based on CTR and bid. Do a search on this forum for the exact method used that AWA posted a while ago.

[Syzygy]

Back to the original point; I have one ad group that consistently has content ctr at 5%, whilst standard search is at 1.5%.

I have no idea why there should be such disparity, but it exists.

Perhaps I don't fully appreciate where it is my content ads are being shown - can someone give me a full list?

Syzygy

[eyeinthesky]

Thanks eWhisper.

That should be it :)

[RedWolf]

Perhaps I don't fully appreciate where it is my content ads are being shown - can someone give me a full list?

There isn't a list available to advertisers. You will have to look though your logs for googlesyndication. The page that sent the click will be in the referer info. If you are having 5% CTR from content ads, you really probably want to look heavily through your logs and see if you are being scammed by some websites doing click fraud.

[Syzygy]

...can someone give me a full list?

That was irony...

Comments appreciated nonetheless - and quite right too - logs should be assessed; however, shouldn't you know up-front where your ads are going to show?

The point is: try it and prove it. It doesn't work in every case (ie: perhaps not for your marketing cause) - there are no hard and fast rules. "Each to their own" must be the philosophy in every instance.

This (ppc/adwords ~ therein content targetting) is an experimental science - as is all forms of advertising... live and learn.

Syzygy

[sacX]

I would use content more, but I can't see the stats for Content Matching in each adgroup.

For example it says I had 100 content matched hits yesterday but it does not attribute them to which keywords generated them.

Do I need to have a different adgroup for every keyword.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

I would use content more, but I can't see the stats for Content Matching in each adgroup.

For example it says I had 100 content matched hits yesterday but it does not attribute them to which keywords generated them.

sacX, this topic has been covered on WebmasterWorld in lots of detail in the past, but very briefly here are some headlines:

* The reason you don't see the content impression and clicks broken out by keywords, is that content ads are not delivered on the basis of individual keywords.

* Instead, an overview of all the keywords in the Ad Group is taken, and ads are delivered on the basis of that overview. In other words, your ads are put on a page of content on the same subject as the Ad Group, taken as a whole.

Do I need to have a different adgroup for every keyword.

In light of the above, IMO, the key to success is to make sure that your Ad Groups are really targeted to one product or service. By this I mean that your keyword(s) and ad copy are about exactly the same thing.

And (again, this is just my opinion) a group of carefully targeted keywords, all about the same subject are better than a single keyword per Ad Group.

Hope that clears things up a bit.

AWA

[donpps]

I am actually in the process of moving some low performing campaigns from the "content & search networks" to only search networks.

Preliminary results indicate higher CTR and possibly higher conversion.

While I believe content networks generate huge impressions (visibility) even if clicks suffer, highly competitive industries might warrant more refined targeting. As usual its a tradeoff.

Don