recently I have disabled "show my ads on content sites in Google's network" since the traffic was junk
it didn't convert into any sales, and I believe there was no chance it could
Since I am looking for daily stats or whatever it is hard to beleive these are very targeted. So far it is all major corporations and charities but i would hate to see my ads over there as the ROI has to be lower. Is this the norm for "Content-Targeted Ads"?
I'd guess that it depends a lot on your topic. I operate a European travel-planning site that runs AdSense "content ads," and I'm seeing very good targeting in most cases: e.g., ads for barge cruises on a "barge cruises" page, ads for Paris hotels in a city guide to Paris, and ads for rail passes in an article on rail travel. Because my content is highly targeted and users are often finding my articles in search engines, it's likely that the conversion rates and ROI on those ads are excellent. But if I were running a fantasy sports site and ads for baseball bats were showing up on my baseball pages, the ads might not convert at all--simply because sports fans aren't necessarily sports participants.
If you find that your ads are appearing mainly on corporate and charity sites, maybe you should try experimenting with different keywords to see if you can get more targeted traffic.
Furmanov wrote:
recently I have disabled "show my ads on content sites in Google's network" since the traffic was junk. it didn't convert into any sales, and I believe there was no chance it could
Again, I think the quality of traffic will vary by topic, but your experience does illustrate the need for more advertiser options. Both advertisers and publishers would benefit if AdWords buyers could include or exclude certain domains (just as AdSense publishers can block up to 200 advertiser domains).
My guess is that some are good and some are horrible. Just like everything else. The bad news imo is that Google is pretty awesome as a rule so why dilute awesome?
Again, it depends. If you advertise only on Google SERPS, you lose:
1) People who never click ads or sponsored links on SERPs (and who never even notice them in the margin).
2) People who want information before they buy--e.g., the person who's thinking of buying a digital camera and wants to read reviews or product comparisons before making a decision.
3) People who have found their way to an information page on your topic without having first searched in Google.
Depending on the topic, you may also experience a higher conversion rate from quality information sites than from Google SERPs, because:
1) People who click ads on SERPs may be looking for information, not to buy, while...
2) The person who's clicked through to an information page from a search engine or a content site's table of contents, and who's then taken the trouble to click an AdWord after having found that information, is more likely to be a serious prospect than the person who just searches on "digital cameras" or "barge cruises" or whatever and clicks AdWords on the SERP.
Again, there's going to be variation from topic to topic, so you have to use good judgment (and a bit of common sense) when deciding whether to advertise only on SERPs or on SERPs plus targeted content pages. Let's look at two hypothetical examples:
1) You're selling hotel rooms in Bruges. The chance that a person researching a trip to Bruges will be interested in hotel rooms is fairly high, and an AdWord for Bruges hotel rooms isn't likely to turn up on a zillion forums and hobby sites, so it's probably worthwhile to choose the content-ad option.
2) You're selling an expensive coffeetable book on nude photography. In this case, your AdWord may show up on sites that are likely to attract the sexually curious rather than well-heeled aficionados of figure photography, so you may be better off sticking with Google's SERPs (and being very careful in your choice of keywords and ad copy, too!).
On my own site, I've noticed that many of the AdWords/AdSense ads are from fairly big players in the travel market (including one major international airline). So it's clear that the pros are using content ads, at least for certain topics.
