Low CTR on Content - Targeted Adwords

[mcbsolutions]

Hi,
I was looking at an Adwords report in Excel. Did a search for the word "content" to view my CTR on all the Content Targeted adwords. I noticed my CTR is horrible on them. Overall, however, my campaign is doing ok, I'm about 2.5%, and this number continues to creep up.

The quote below is from adwords FAQ:

Why is my clickthrough rate lower for content ads than search ads? You will see a line for Content-Targeted AdWords performance in your Ad Group reports, so you can easily track how your ads are performing on content sites. Due to the differences in user behavior on search results versus content sites, some advertisers may notice a difference between the clickthrough rate (CTR) for ads on search pages and those on content pages. However, since you only pay for the clicks, the additional clicks you get from targeted ads are generally beneficial. To see if Content-Targeted AdWords is right for your business, the best thing to do, if your company is set up for it, is to track how many clicks convert to sales both before and after running ads on the content sites in our network

My question is: I understand the clicks are generally beneficial, but the impressions are not beneficial, and they seem to be outweighing the clicks by a huge margin when I view my stats under "all time". I would think one would want to continue to run the ads on the content sites in Google's network as that would give one more exposure. However, I do see alot of impressions with no clicks on a daily basis in the content targeted ads, thus bringing down my overall CTR for the adgroup. I use powerposting to run several targeted phrases for each ad, the majority in brackets, ie. [super duper widget]. I'm kind of lost here on what to do.

Should I dump the content targeted ads? Isn't this what I'm paying Google for? I don't want to not be in the content targeted ads if my competitors are there. Thanks for any ideas here.

Steve

[woop01]

I'm not sure that the negative impact of bringing down the CTR for the ad group is. Google has already stated that content site impressions aren't included in your stats for the ad group.

[chiyo]

this is interesting. what woop says is right. the only thing that should really concern you is whether a low CTR would mean your keywords being deleted, and google does not count these.

What should be far more interesting, as google says, is how well each type converts.

[woop01]

And it would be MUCH easier to determine how each type converts if they would allow tracking URLS for content site ads.

[chiyo]

content ads come from a referrer something like "pagead2..." For adwords you can use a tracking URL, as explained in my response to you in an earlier thread.

Google probably doesent want you to know which actual sites are refering to you as you may kick out the middleman and negotiate a separate deal with a big referrer!

[mcbsolutions]

Thanks for the help. I guess they do appear in my overall stats, but are not included when Google evaluates my overall performance. So for now I will leave them alone.

Chiyo, can you point me to that thread that shows how to use tracking URL's in adwords. I'd like to give that a whirl.

[woop01]

I know they come from different URLs (googlesyndication.com) but my tracking system I have setup is based on query strings from Google. All I want to do is put something like “&type=adwords” or “&type=adsense” on my tracking URLs. You currently can't use separate tracking URLs for Adwords and Adsense. I've asked Google about this and they admitted that it isn't possible.

[mcbsolutions]

I see. This is not related to my original question but just found this IP address on my site.

216.239.45.4

OrgName: Google Inc.
OrgID: GOGL
Address: 2400 E. Bayshore Parkway
City: Mountain View
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94043
Country: US

Is this a spider or someone from Google running up my adwords bill? Lol.

[killroy]

Create two copies for your campaign, enable one only for content ads and teh other only for search ads.

Use different tracking URLs for each campaign... voila!

SN

[woop01]

Create two copies for your campaign, enable one only for content ads and teh other only for search ads.
Use different tracking URLs for each campaign... voila!

That's a great idea but I already tried it last week. The problem comes in because you can't turn the Adwords that are shown on Google off. You can only turn the Adwords that are shown on parter search sites like AOL off so the Google-shown Adwords would be included in your Adsense totals.

[killroy]

Hmm come to think of it...

I used to deselect the checkbox next to search to disablew ads, but I still recieved impressions.

If that's not a bug, then at the very least highly misleading. why have a checkbox that doesn'T do anythinging?

SN

[woop01]

It does turn off the Adwords that show up on AOL, Teoma, and Ask Jeeves. You just can't turn off the Adwords that show up on Google with that check box.