Is Content Network worth it?

is there really that much branding created?

[kmac30]

i'm currently working for a client that hasn't been tracking sales for the last year +. they had a larger firm running all their online marketing and they never asked for proof of conversions...

ok, that aside. i've been running their stuff for the last month or so and have conversion tracking and analytics all running smoothly. they have a tiny budget that i'm trying to get them to increase and i have them almost ready to go.

in the last month, they've spent $$$ on Content Network and haven't made 1 sale. They spend 30% of their budget on the CN and had ~550k impressions with about 800 clicks for a CTR around 0.15%. i have 2 options right now. 1. increase the overall budget and put that all into search. or 2. cut the CN budget, move it to search and see if that helps conversions. i would expect the CN to stay the same and i'd expect to see the conversions for search go up

is the CN really worth it in this situation?

-thanks

[buckworks]

~550k impressions

Is that text or image ads? (Just wondering.)

What is your targeting strategy? Are you just letting Google spread your ads around the network as best it can, or have you taken steps to be more selective about where your ads appear? Sometimes less is more.

Suggestion: don't just lower the budget, also try reducing the bids. It's counterintuitive for some folks, but you can often get more productivity out of a fixed ad budget by bidding less. Your ads will rank lower but your clicks will cost less, which will help the budget to stretch.

[PayMePerClick]

While it depends on the product and service at hand, I'd say with a tight budget you should get ride of CN first. After conversions increase (most likely) then leverage for a bigger budget.

While CN may work for some verticals it still probably doesn't compare to the search conversion % and if you have room to spend more in search it seems like an clear move.

Personally I only run CN when I have HUGE budgets and the client is looking for some Branding and side effects of minor incremental revenue/conversions. Just me.

[netmeg]

As with everything - it depends. I have clients doing tons of business in Content (upper five figures every month) and loving the conversions. I have other clients that I don't even bother trying, because the effort to find likely converting placements is more trouble than it's worth.

Take a look at the Ad Planner to look for sites you can target. Take a look at a site placement report for your existing campaigns to see if your money is being eaten up by sites you can exclude (unless specifically targeting, I automatically add certain video and social networking sites to my negative sites when I first create the campaigns) Use the Site Exclusion tool to block out categories of sites. Make sure you have conversion tracking or goals turned on, so you can measure what's working. Don't open up with too many keywords, and make sure they're in small, tightly focused ad groups.

[kmac30]

thanks for those replies.

-buck - just text. they had submitted image ads last fall/winter for the holidays and they were all disapproved and never got a click (i'm not sure the client even knows this) CPC seems high to me and if they choose to keep the CN, i'm definitely dropping the bids. and for now, GGL is spreading at will. i've put in a couple domains to avoid b/c i know about them, but otherwise its free for all.

PMPC - i agree with the tight budget canning the CN. i've only handled accounts that didn't use CN (tested with larger budgets and didn't see results).

netmeg - thanks for the ideas. definitely going to look into them.

its hard to clean up what this other company was doing. i really wanted to start from scratch, but the client would have flipped.