Site Targeted Campaigns

How high do you have to bid to get impressions?

[Tropical Island]

I started a site targeted campaign and started the bid per 1000 impressions at roughly where my content numbers are. I received no impressions.

I have now doubled that amount. Anything higher would not be reasonable. Still no impressions.

Any ideas?

[Nancy99]

Remember for the content network Google has to have a real person review your ads. Typically when you site target, you will also need to pay more for your ads to show. When you site target, your ad will fill the entire ad block and so your eCPM must be greater than the combined eCPM of the top four ads. Even if you are using a text ad versus image when you site target, your bid must be high enough to bump out the regular content targeted Google AdWords ads that would automatically show in that spot.

The bottomline is either your ads have not been approved or your CPM is too low.

[egurr]

I'm going through the same thing and just got off the phone, and on-line messaging with Google. The problem is they are swamped right now, and some image ads are taking several days to be approved. I had on that took 8 days, and two e-mails to them, to get the image ads looked at. (I don't think the emails helped, it's just first come first served).
In short, it will take a few weeks to test.

[Tropical Island]

Mine are text ads and have been up for a couple of weeks.

I increased the CPM by 50¢ per day from my current cost for content (where I get 20,000+ impressions daily)to a point that is double my current costs.

You would think that out of the 20+ sites I've selected at least a few impressions would show up.

I may try a test at double the current setting just to see if I can activate something.

[bpcombs]

It really depends upon how popular the site is, and how many people are running ads. If the site has content that drives high dollar ContentMatch ads, you might have trouble getting your SiteMatch ads to show.

I've gotten traffic on many sites for a dollar or two CPM and I've had trouble getting impressions on sites like WSJ for even a $40 CPM!

Brian

[Syzygy]

I may try a test at double the current setting just to see if I can activate something.

And did that work?

Syzygy

[Tropical Island]

No, I am now at more than double my bid for CPC content and still not showing any impressions. That's on 33 sites I have chosen.

That's using very generous numbers of a 5% CTR. If the CTR were lower than that the cost would be triple or higher on a CPM basis than for CPC.

I'm going to be on vacation next week so if nothing happens in the next few days I'm going to pause that campaign.

[Syzygy]

So there's no way to tell at what cost level any given site targeted will start showing ads? That seems a bit obtuse.

I'm a novice to site targeting and have found this aspect to be somewhat off-putting. Initial attempts show that, seemingly, I can bring down overall cpc markedly via site targeting. The only thing is, I've only been able to run ads on a handful of sites - not enough for me to determine greater value. And I've no intention of hoicking up my min bids to some ridiculous figure to see if someone might be gracious enough to accept our ads.

Greater transparency here would be useful.

Syzygy

[Tropical Island]

It would be nice if each site that was listed as a choice had some sort of guideline as to what sort of minimum amount was required. We have that in CPC - why not in site targeting?

I understand that the amount to get shown probably changes on a daily basis however some sort of price level would be greatly appreciated.

[bpcombs]

I think the problem may be that there's an apple to oranges comparison going on.

SiteMatch ads, naturally, are placed at the site level. They are competing, however, against ContentMatch ads, which are placed at the page level (based upon a contextual match between the keyword and the page). I imagine that this makes predicting traffic at particular CPM extremely difficult.

[Syzygy]

I see that as being something for Google to sort out - not me. If I want to purchase something and enquire of the price, tell me how much it is.

Syzygy

[Tropical Island]

Just an update as I am now back from vacation and trying to get this experiment to work.

Just as an example of my content activity my most active keyword in the last 7 days on more than 30,000 impressions I had a CTR of just under 4%. The CPM was about $1.62.

For the site targeted campaign I started with a CPM of $2.00 and a daily budget of $10. I received no impressions from 37 sites.

I slowly increased the CPM to $10 and increased the daily budget to $30. I am still not getting any impressions. The campaign shows as active.

Can anyone suggest what is going on here. Some of the sites are quite large while others are smaller.