Messed up my content ads . help

[Mark_A]

I used to have a campaign which mixed trad adwords on google with content ads. We used to get billed a fair figure regularly for content clicks every month.

I decided I wanted more control so I split out trad adwords and content adwords into two seperate campaigns. As far as I can see they are as they were, just split.

I now have an adwords campaign which works, and I have managed to save money using a search performance query and then changing keywords to phrase match. I am happy that my adwords promotion seems to be working fine now.

But my adwords for content campaign seems to have died a death, it still exposes ads, but there are now no clicks. I checked the first few sites in the Network tab and they are completely irrelevant so I have started to exclude sites. But still, there are quite reasonable volumes of exposures but no clicks.

I had said I would save my boss about 20% of his expenses on adwords, with this die back of content clicks I am saving him more like 50% but we may be missing real enquiries which is bad.

Anyone have any advice for me?

[buckworks]

Consider crafting some new ads designed with the content network in mind, rather than merely duplicating the same ads you're running in search. People are in a different mindset when they encounter your ad during an active search, versus just noticing it while surfing, so it's worth testing some different ads.

Another thought that comes to mind is wondering about your negative keywords.

You'll often want different negatives for content vs search, so if the existing negatives merely got cloned when you "just split" the campaigns, your negatives might be blocking more than you need. That might be a place to check.

Are you doing any targeted placements for content ads, or just relying on automatic placements?

[Mark_A]

Hi buckworks,

I currently have no negative keywords on either my adwords or content campaigns. I have to admit that I don't know how to use them atm.

What I don't understand is that these ads before, when they were all lumped in together, adwords and content, used to generate many hundreds of pounds of clicks on the content network. It seems my process of splitting them into seperate campaigns has somehow broken the content ads.

We are not doing targeted placements at the moment. When I look in networks it only shows a few, perhaps 7 sites, and the majority of exposures are on "other" websites, not listed. But those that are listed don't fill me with great confidence.

[buckworks]

Another thought ... when you added the new campaign so you could split search and content, which got the existing campaign and which got the new campaign?

If content got the new campaign, that might be what's happening here. Even when ads are just copied from an existing campaign, a new campaign usually has a "settling in" period while the algos assess the strength of the ads. That might be what you're seeing here.

Re negative keywords - Weeding out off-target impressions is one of the easiest and fastest ways to improve the performance of your campaigns.

If you were selling high-priced blue widgets, it's a good bet that users doing these searches would not be good prospects for your products:

free blue widgets
vintage blue widgets
blue widget recalls
blue widget lawsuit
make your own blue widgets
blue widget recycling

If you stop your ads from appearing on those searches it would improve the performance of your campaign and make your ads more competitive on the impressions that remain.

The above searches would be blocked by adding these words to your negatives:
free
vintage
recalls
lawsuit
make
recycling

Spend some time messing with a keyword suggestion tool to watch for unsuitable searches, and also go patrolling in your query reports, watching for words that should be blocked.

[netmeg]

The thing is, you may have been spending hundreds of pounds (or dollars) on clicks in the Content Network, but you have no idea if they were actually converting, good clicks, do you? Were you running conversion tracking before? (I don't remember if you said you were) If so, then go back through your historical reports and see how many conversions you were getting from the Content Network. You may have lost out on a lot of impressions or even clicks, but they might have been wasted garbage clicks (or fraud)

You can run placement reports on old deleted campaigns, so run one on that campaign that USED to have Content Network included and see where the clicks were coming from then. If they look like likely places, then you can placement target them.

Go take a look at the ad planner. If you have an idea of the general demographic of whom you are looking for, you might be able to find some sites to placement target in there.

Do your customers use gmail? I have some customers who do extremely well with ads in gmail (and others who just tank) It's easily tested.

[Mark_A]

Another thought ... when you added the new campaign so you could split search and content, which got the existing campaign and which got the new campaign?

If content got the new campaign, that might be what's happening here. Even when ads are just copied from an existing campaign, a new campaign usually has a "settling in" period while the algos assess the strength of the ads. That might be what you're seeing here.

Yes, content got the new campaign, perhaps that is what is happenning. It looks bad because it looks like I have just taken a knife to our visitors :-/

The above searches would be blocked by adding these words to your negatives:
free
vintage
recalls
lawsuit
make
recycling

Yes that sounds like I should be doing it.
I will make an effort to get it working.

[Mark_A]

The thing is, you may have been spending hundreds of pounds (or dollars) on clicks in the Content Network, but you have no idea if they were actually converting, good clicks, do you? Were you running conversion tracking before? (I don't remember if you said you were) If so, then go back through your historical reports and see how many conversions you were getting from the Content Network. You may have lost out on a lot of impressions or even clicks, but they might have been wasted garbage clicks (or fraud)

Hi netmeg, no I am not running any conversion monitoring, I am not sure how I would, we are in the main informational sites, we do have a shop but most punters phone or email us as a result of visiting the website.

It is true that they could have been rubbish. And certainly on adwords in search I am confident I am on good quality now as I went phrase match and have checked the search performance query, it is looking much better now. That said, volumes of clicks are in decline atm.

You can run placement reports on old deleted campaigns, so run one on that campaign that USED to have Content Network included and see where the clicks were coming from then. If they look like likely places, then you can placement target them.

That sounds like a good idea. thanks.

Go take a look at the ad planner. If you have an idea of the general demographic of whom you are looking for, you might be able to find some sites to placement target in there.

Do your customers use gmail? I have some customers who do extremely well with ads in gmail (and others who just tank) It's easily tested.

I haven't played with the adplanner yet.

As for gmail, not sure our punters gmail or not.

Thanks for the advice netmeg, I would not find out about these things on my own :-) (probably not anyhow)

[Mark_A]

BTW "placement reports" are great netmeg.

It might have taken me some time to come across them. Thanks for the advice.

[exmoorbeast]

Sorry to jump in. but can anyone report and successful use of -ve kws on the content network. From what I have read on the Google Help site, -ves don't always work?

[Mark_A]

Using that great placement report for the first two quarters of this year, I have found loads of sites I do not want to be on and some that I do want to be on.

I set up Display Network Managed Placements for the sites I want to be on.

Then I set up Exclusions, both at the Ad group level and at the Campaign level.

Thing is, I did this all initially yesterday and so far none of it has had any effect.

How long do you think it should take to have effect?

[netmeg]

Ok, you don't need to set up exclusions if you set up the campaign for managed placements to ONLY show on those sites.

(Wasn't clear from what you said if you did it that way)

Are you using keywords so that Google can figure out the theme?

It can take a few days for Display (I will never get used to to calling it that) Network ads to run, as they have a different approval process.

[jimbanks]

Am I reading this right that the impression level is the same as it was before but CTR is now a lot less?

It seems to me reading between the lines there are a lot of gaps in how you are measuring and managing. The whole idea behind having search and display broken out is to allow you to measure, report and manage differently.

The minute you set up a new campaign the "theme" of the old campaign is lost and it takes time and usually some form of editorial review for you to get back the love. Also, oftentimes if your ads stop showing when you do this someone else's ads get shown in your place.

Without knowing how much money you were making before I would suggest your boss might be pleased with a 50% reduction in cost, if your sales volume have gone down then you probably need to bid more aggressive until you get back in the sweet spot, and definitely track conversion, there is a ton of lousy traffic on the Display Network.

You should also consider image ads, using the free ad builder tool, there are a lot of opportunities for traffic there and not many advertisers use them, cheap traffic, high volume.

[Mark_A]

netmeg : Ok, you don't need to set up exclusions if you set up the campaign for managed placements to ONLY show on those sites.

Oh, I didn't realise that. I put in 20 domains so far as managed placements and quite a lot more as adgroup level and campaign level excusions.

But still it seems automatic placements are continuing (without clicks) and so far (a couple of days now after I did it) there are no impressions on my managed placement domains.

I wonder if I have done something more basic, perhaps disabled it in some way, but Display Network Automatic Placements seems to be creating impressions ok. There are 5 new domains popped up there now. Mostly useless :-(

[Mark_A]

Google Search is off
Search Partners is off

[Mark_A]

Update: it seems slowly to be coming back to me. Some of the domains I specified (managed placements) are now getting small numbers of exposures and adwords is still placing ads in its own recommended domains (automatic placements).

It seems to be that both managed placements and automatic placements are working side by side.