Forum Moderators: martinibuster
We are not using the cookies to track repeated visits and purchases but NO sales for the past three weeks don't look compelling. I opted out from the option for the first two months and started testing it.
I am myself an adsense user and works for a company that spends quite a lot of money in adwords.
If this trend continures, I will have to pull the plug...off the content ads(adsense).
Any idea to boost Sales?
p.s. Search Engine Traffic is doing great. So, ad copy is not that terrible.
JAG
As justageek says, many are "assuming" that adsense clicks are somehow inferior to search engine clicks - however there is very little hard evidence for that - either for or against.
Like every ad channel, some work well for some campaigns/demographics/products, and badly for others.
I have heard that the more tight your niche is for ads, the better ROI when using AdSense. But you can't enable showing your ads in AdSense for some of your ads but not others.
Also, if you are advertising any of the big money keywords, it is more likely AdSense publishers are optimizing their pages to show those specific ads. (ie. the $$ per clicks ads rather than the ads paying only a few cents).
I think it's a fair assumption that the AdSense side will not be as effective or productive as the ones generated on Google itself. When you're typing a search term in Google you're looking for just that. But when you go to an AdSense enabled site maybe it's a community site where folks are just immune to the related pitches or just not a seeking mood.
I imagine that's why Google doesn't penalize AdWords campaign that opt to be included in AdSense when it comes to CTR.
But while it may not be as effective as AdWords ads on Google the AdSense placed ads ARE incremental. While I imagine the conversion rate is probably lower on AdSense relative to pure AdWords I'm surprised that the campaign didn't generate any tracked sales with so many clicks.
Maybe you should consider rewording the ad. There's no need to get into specifics but if you're selling a product or a service, spell that out. Realize that the AdSense site's crowd is likely going to be more educated about the keyword than the person who hit a search engine to seek out more related information. So don't mince words. Don't hesitate naming prices. Be as blunt as possible on that front so you know that you are getting quality traffic that is looking for what you have to offer and at the price you are offering it.
Just my thoughts.
Also the idea of having the ad reflect your actual service or good being sold would be more effective as it would give you more prequalification.
For example:
Information about widgets may get a lot of clicks.
Information about red widgets may get less clicks
Buy red widgets may get even less clicks
Buy red widgets for $XX.xx may get less clicks
But as you narrow things down your chance for a sell increases. Only someone about to buy a red widget would click the last one.
Frankly 2,000 clicks without a sale is very, very, very, very bad. Are you sure that your tracking is ok? Do you track the ip of the visitors? Could this be a competitor trying to ruin you?
I would suspend the content sites inmediately, even at $0.05 that is $100.00
When i say 0.2% CTR for content ads and No sales, Yes, We can track them separately for search adwords and content site ads(adsense). Our company sells hundred thousand items. I can say only widgets without price in it, because they are hundreds different prices for one widget based on specs.
It is OK to go below 0.5% for content ads. there is no limit on that. Of course for adwords search ads, we have to keep 0.5%.
CPC for our keywords is not that high. It is far from a buck per click.
I have been using adwords almost one and half years now and our company is premium sponsor. So, we get some help from internal creative team and Google itself.
Search Ads (adwords) is doing quite good conversion rate and sales. I am satiesfied with the result.
However, content ads (adsense) has been terrible. They use same ad copy.
I am going to try content ads another month. Let's see what happens. I was going to try Overture's content ads, too. I might have to wait until I get better result from Google...
I think there must be some problem at your end, with the way you are running the ads.
If the generally achieved level of CTR on AdSense was 0.2%, then it is unlikely that many publishers would be speaking so highly of it.
and I am a publisher that speaks highly of AdSense
I think it would be worthwhile to separate out your content ads and test some different copy. As Paris says, users are in a different mindset when they come across your ad in a content setting instead of seeing it after a search, so it could well take something different to connect with them.
Here's something I've been thinking about: In many Adwords ads, the URL is the only thing that identifies the company, but some Adsense formats used by content partners do not display the URL. The result is that some ads give no clue about who is offering to sell you their blue widgets. To me that seems like wasting an opportunity to support brand awareness. I'd be interested to know if anyone has tested copy for content ads that includes the company name whether the URL is displayed or not. What are the effects of sacrificing promotional verbiage to play up the company name? Is there any negative effect on CTR?
To me its not hard to understand that some of those who have used SE PPC for a while and found it highly profitable for their campaigns may not find the same for context ads, as the channel or delivery is very different.
Just as a theory i guess SE PPC works very well for lower cost consumer items, traditional direct response type methods reborn in PPC, broad based items that sell naturally on the web, "urgent" needs and so on.
The nature of context/Adsense i think would work well for more educated or informed buyers, business services, higher cost items that require some knowledge before buying, etc etc.
This is not specifically the market that the greay majority of high volume PPC advertisers have found successful over the years.
To this extent we may have to wait for these "new" advertisers to get the "cheap, direct, back of the bus" mentality of PPC out of their minds and try context-based PPC. One way to do this is for google to offer Adsense as a sole option, not just an add-on for Adwords advertisers.
Chiyo,
An interesting post. Undoubtably there is a difference between the various sorts of advertisers that you portray.
And it may well be that there is a (large) market for the type of advertiser that you suggest.
Whilst I can see that it would be useful for these advertisers to have the option of "AdSense only", perhaps the thing that stops it is that Google must make more money from the SE adverts, and its not in their financial interest to offer that option?
I wonder what other ways google could encourage this new market to revisit the potential of ppc for them?
I write this because as adwords advertisers we advertise high cost targeted b-b business services. We have had hardly any competition in 2 years as our well known multi-national competitors do not use PPC (yet!), and as a result we do get a lot of qualified enquiries, (especially nowadays from adsense sites).
Any idea to boost Sales?
Let's face the truth. Content sites are visited mostly by regular visitors and they have searching for new content in mind and not searching for some product - like they do sometimes during search engine usage - that's why AdSense banners on content sites inherently result in smaller number of sales after click.
How can you boost sales? Bet lower in Adword account to get more impressions. Maybe your text in AdSense banners is not good enough or your goods to sell are not good or overexpensive. I am sure that just excluding content sites (AdSense) from searching will not bring you significant increase in sales. You need to do something more than that!
Content sites are visited mostly by regular visitors and they have searching for new content in mind and not searching for some product - like they do sometimes during search engine usage - that's why AdSense banners on content sites inherently result in smaller number of sales after click.
Nonsense. A "content site" can be anything from a general news and entertainment site (MSN, NewYorkTimes.com) to a community site (Webmaster World, Cruise Critic) to a special-interest information site. Making broad assumptions about "content sites" and their audiences is as foolish as making broad assumptions about "print media" and their readers.
Let's take a closer look at each of your assumptions:
"Content sites are visited mostly by regular visitors."
That may be true of THE NEW YORK TIMES or a community site like Webmaster World, but it certainly wouldn't be true of an information site that people visit when they're planning a trip to a specific destination, looking for Mark Twain quotations, or seeking reviews of digital cameras.
"They have searching for new content in mind and not searching for some product."
Also incorrect. They may be visiting DPReview or Imaging Resource for a review of a Canon digital camera, or they may be visiting CruiseDiva to learn about a specific cruise ship. Or they may be finding articles on those topics in Google. (My own travel-planning site is a case in point: Most users arrive on inside pages via search, which means they aren't looking for "new content"--they're looking for specific information.)
"That's why AdSense banners on content sites inherently result in smaller number of sales after click."
Again, you're making an assumption based on gut instinct rather than factual evidence. And your assumption goes against what advertisers have told us in other threads. Chiyo, for example, has stated several times that his company's content ads sometimes perform better than search ads.
While the technology behind AdSense and other "content ads" may be new, the concept of targeted or contextual content ads has been around since the invention of special-interest media. Take magazines like POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY, PC, and QST (a magazine about amateur radio). What kinds of ads do they run? Simple: ads about photography, computer hardware and software, and ham gear. Such "endemic advertising," as it's called in some circles, performs much better than general-interest advertising and adds value to the magazine instead of detracting from the magazine's appeal. And it clearly works--if it didn't, you wouldn't see page after page of mail-order ads for camera equipment in the back of POP PHOTO or the same ads running month after month in PC, QST, or DOG WORLD.
Google's AdSense program simply uses new technology to provide the same kind of targeted, relevant advertising on Web pages. The mechanism is new, but the concept is old and well-proven--which is why AdSense offers as much potential for advertisers as it does for publishers.
I find that the best results for my Adwords ads are those that appear on similar content sites. People go to a content site (mine or someone else's) looking for information. They see an ad for my e-book and decide it's worth paying a few extra bucks for more detailed information or a spread sheet to help them practice the work.
So if you are selling information it can be best for your ads to run on content sites. It may be different for sales of equipment; I have no experience in this.
