Winning Results with Google AdWords Second Edition_11 doc

Two-Word Broad Matching Many conservative AdWords advertisers prefer to use phrase match and exact match rather than go broad with their keywords.. This is not entirely precise, given th

I’ll assume that you’ve already selected the check box that shows your ads on search partner sites, a first step in expanding distribution beyond Google Search, and that you’ve already

thought about which countries are good places to show your ads and selected them accordingly

in your campaign settings

Getting the Most Out of the Keywords You Know

You may be tempted to think that generating lists of additional keywords and throwing them into

your AdWords account is a good way to make more money with your campaign I’ll cover that,

but first, are you getting the best performance out of the keywords that are already there?

Deal with Your Lowest-Quality Keywords

If some of your keywords have gathered poor quality history, they may be shown in lower ad

positions, or they might even fail to meet the “bid requirement” on many queries, and therefore

in those cases not show at all No keyword is technically inactive today under the new regime

I’ve called AdWords 2.7, so there is no urgent need to “rescue” any given keyword from

“deactivated” status That means your task here is less urgent, but also harder, because your poor

quality keywords still stay active So overall, the process of improving your account and raising

volume is going to be subtler than ever before

In the old days, prior to Quality-Based Bidding, Google never had consistent advice for reactivating keywords deactivated by low CTRs Yes, there was boilerplate advice for those

suffering from “deactivated keywords syndrome,” but it tended to be ineffective The complexity

of the task of cleaning up a low-quality account has grown more complex with the advent of

Quality-Based Bidding You’ll have to make some judgment calls about how well you’ve built

your account so far, and consider pausing, moving, or deleting some keywords or groups to

improve quality The usual advice about continuing to test ads, and sending users to appropriate

landing pages, certainly applies in spades

First, go back to some of the fundamental advice shared previously You should have started your account with highly relevant and narrow terms, and gradually built campaigns with broader,

less targeted terms as you established a strong account history If you didn’t do that, and your

account is in tatters with poor Quality Scores all over the place, you may have difficulty digging

out of this hole, because some aspect of the Quality Score formula includes an account-wide

Quality Score that acts as an “overlay”—either helping to “green light” or “red light” new

keywords I recommend you contact your Google rep and ask them whether the account is

worth fixing, or whether its poor start makes it unlikely that your actions will fix an intractable

situation Ask them if it makes more sense to delete the current account and start again with a

new one Generally speaking, accounts with histories are better than fresh accounts, even if some

of that history is poor But some might be lost causes

In doing this, you are possibly accomplishing two goals The first is getting more information out of Google as to the best recommended course Make it clear to them that you want more

clicks and are eager to learn (beyond pabulum boilerplate-type advice) how you might expand

your click volume The second goal, though, is tied to the hope that they’re listening to your

troubles and willing to take a look at some of the stats associated with your account If you’re lucky, maybe someone will see that your account-wide Quality Score is an undue hindrance to you, and manually adjust it This is a gray area No one really knows how often such manual overrides are done, and how much they actually help in relation to improving the actual signals and stats that go into your Quality Score in an automated way.

At one time, there seemed to be no harm to having unsuccessful or ill-chosen keywords in your account At other times, Google has alluded to “account-wide” calculations that can hinder full delivery of your ads Today, it seems wise to sweep through accounts periodically, looking for keywords deemed to be poor quality You can even get a bit more specific than that, now that Google is making available detail that will show Quality on a scale of 1 to 10 You should study the very poor quality keywords even more closely than borderline OK keywords Don’t delete keywords if they seem relevant to you, but do be ruthless if the meanings of those keywords don’t really quite sync up with the product or service the associated ads are leading the searcher

to For example, in a campaign for a company that facilitates the buying and selling of businesses (a broad-based B2B campaign that is still quite different from similar B2C campaigns), a subtle

difference in the searcher’s query (arby’s franchise as opposed to arby’s outlet) seemed to be

indicative as to whether the search was most often from a consumer (who would be dissatisfied

with the results if they visited the landing page on the query arby’s outlet) or a prospective business buyer, who might search for something like arby’s franchise information, but is certainly somewhat likely to search for arby’s franchise Using predictive tools and then

machine learning, Google’s Quality Score algorithm attempts to first predict, and then confirm, which keywords are irrelevant to your target customers Tossing unrelated keyphrases into your account doesn’t help searchers, and ultimately, doesn’t help you In this day and age, you have to

tighten things up Delete poor-performing keywords that are obviously irrelevant (such as arby’s

outlet here), to insulate yourself against Quality Score woes down the road This will have

the indirect effect of allowing you to expand your overall click volume, because the offending keywords won’t have a polluting effect on account-wide quality measures

The bottom line? Any keyword that shows up as poor in your account for an extended period

of time is a symptom of deeper problems In some cases you may want to keep them running and take the chance that they won’t be hurting your overall account But in many cases you should fix the underlying problems (poor relevance, lack of ad testing, insufficient granularity, irrelevant or poor landing pages) or delete those keywords, rather than soldiering on with them In the example

of arby’s outlet, Google’s machine learning can actually measure the dissatisfaction consumers

feel when they go to a page thinking it might provide a map or business information, and stumble instead on a niche, B2B site trying to attract franchise investors The angry consumer hits the back button immediately (or in rare cases conveys their dissatisfaction to Google through a form

or email) Such behavior will tend to lower Quality Scores on particular keywords, and also lead Google to begin slapping predictive low Quality Scores on words in new accounts that have a high probability of dissatisfying users in a similar way

So at this point, I am actually offering you a warning It seems tempting to expand your account willy-nilly Just give me more, more, more! cries your brain But if “more” means throwing

a pile of keywords into ad groups without regard to searcher intent, the strategy is actually stupid

And Google AdWords, as sure as the day is long, will punish you for reckless kinds of expansion

So far, it doesn’t sound like it will be easy to expand your ad distribution, does it? Well, that’s a curious thing Google’s bias towards tight targeting creates an even bigger paradox than

ever before One way to finesse this is to choose ads that do well in CTR terms, and take a

short-term hit on ROI in some cases If you build an account with industry-leading CTRs, Google

AdWords will begin to love you on the whole, and this might give you leeway down the road

to expand your account Another way to think of it is that you need to think tight and precise,

even as you expand If you want to undertake experiments in looser targeting and experimental

expansion, consider keeping those experiments (campaigns and ad groups) separate from the rest

of your account, for ease of decision-making going forward

Two-Word Broad Matching

Many conservative AdWords advertisers prefer to use phrase match and exact match rather than

go broad with their keywords But this can limit your distribution To expand your distribution

cautiously, choose one popular word and then enter 20–30 two-word broad-match combinations

that include that word This will show your ad to more users but at the same time will allow you

considerable control over the types of queries that show your ad The fact that the second word

will typically need to appear in the user’s query will reduce the potential distribution enough to

make the ad highly targeted, without ruling out users who type in long, unpredictable queries

that include any number of other words This is not entirely precise, given that Google has made

broad match a ground for semantic experimentation; as discussed in Chapter 7, the broad match

method is not literally rules-based and may vary somewhat as Google experiments with what it

calls expanded broad matching

The additional advantage of the two-word broad match is that it can be fairly specific, so you’ll probably generate healthy CTRs As such, you can afford to bid less and generate a strong

ROI The same general logic applies to three-word broad matches

Four-word broad matches are rarely worth bothering with It’s generally too much effort to use long strings of words in your campaign, except perhaps in special situations For example,

you might find that a fair number of users put questions to the search engine, such as how to sell

my timeshare Even here, a three-word broad match—how sell timeshare—would handle many

possible combinations, as would the two-word broad match omitting the word how

Expanded Broad Matching: Disable Only if Necessary

An additional benefit of broad matching is that it invokes Google’s expanded broad matching

feature, which may selectively show your add on similar phrases that include plurals, verb stems,

and other close variations without making you do all the work of discovering them Although

at first, many advertisers saw expanded broad matching as worrisome when it was rolled out,

Google has been careful to test the technology and to calibrate it conservatively enough that

ads are not showing on all kinds of unrelated search queries A good rule of thumb is, if you are

bidding particularly high, you need to be more concerned about the potential of the expanded

broad matching technology to show your ad on less relevant searches The only simple way to

disable expanded broad matching is not to use broad matching at all But if you’ve been overly

dependent on phrase and exact matching and are looking for more volume, you should strongly

consider broad matching to achieve fuller coverage

One-Word Broad Matching + Negative Keywords

Many advertisers ignore the potential of the one-word broad match with good reason It can cast too broad a net, and paradoxically, because uncreative or deep-pocketed advertisers may be drawn to such words, prices can be too high

The other reason that many ignore the potential of one-word broad matches is, it must be said, slavish adherence to conventional wisdom Google does its part on this one If you ask staff for advice on your campaign, they’ll often recommend against such “untargeted” keywords

As the imagination of the average advertiser is increasingly captivated by more targeted keyword choices, one-word broad matches may now be a relative bargain The other important benefit here is that they can provide your campaign with huge additional volume! And for most experienced advertisers, volume is where it’s at As long as the conversion rates generated by such words are keeping the cost of an order or lead in line with what you’re getting from other parts of your campaign, you’ll be fine

There’s a danger that these words will run into Quality Score problems, because your customers come from a small subset of phrases that include the word in question; so only a few people click on the ad One effective way of keeping one-word broad matches in a healthy state

(higher CTRs) is to enter long lists of negative keywords to ensure that the ad isn’t showing on

any popular queries that are irrelevant to your business You can continue to discover and add negatives to solidify your CTR on the broad-matched term

Another way to guard against single-word broad matches triggering too many irrelevant matches is to use the little-known technique of making them “one-word phrase matches” by enclosing them in quotes Logically, these should actually be the same as one-word broad matches, but the key difference is that broad match allows Google’s “expanded broad matching”

whereas phrase match does not The single-word phrase match will therefore often provide

a more reliable matching experience for single-word keywords This treatment of one-word keywords is an undocumented aspect of AdWords but is informally confirmed by Google reps

To discover what phrases that include that word are popular of late, you can use the keyword tool, as we saw in Chapter 7 (see Figure 7-2), but with a twist Select your keyword—let’s

say it’s a broad keyword such as nuts Go to the Match Type drop-down list box and set it

to Negative (see Figure 9-1) Depending on what keyword you’ve selected, Google’s smart technology is going to show you a variety of popular matches on that keyword Some will be words like “organic” that are still in the realm of relevancy Others may be more like shots in the dark (“bolts”) that could be shown by Google’s matching technology on expanded broad matching, as the matching technology grasps at straws If you’re broad matching, you can’t do without negatives Add as many negative keywords as you can in order to exclude those searches that are clearly not relevant Of course, keep the relevant ones This means you may need to scan the list of several hundred potential negatives “by hand” (or by eye and brain, anyway) If you over-automate this part, all you’ll do is reduce your click volume to near nothing, by stopping your ad from showing on many relevant queries as well as irrelevant ones

As you can see from Figure 9-1, each potential negative keyword is easy to add to the keyword list by clicking on Add Negative This is a lot of work, but it allows you to employ broad matching with confidence, which can help you outdo other advertisers in competitive

fields and increase volume on a stalled campaign It can be well worth the few minutes a week

you spend doing it If you’re wondering what is the maximum amount of negative keywords I’ve

added to a campaign… it’s 8,500 I’m not proud of that, or anything Stuff happens! (It turned

out that was too many, and we cut it back to 500 in that case.)

Beware: some third-party vendors are accessing all of Google’s suggested negatives through the AdWords API and then passing off the list as their own proprietary list The list is valuable,

but the price of access is generally free or close to it if you get the information right from

Google And as I mentioned, if the list of potential negatives is particularly long, you do need a

set of eyes and a brain to pick and choose the truly irrelevant words

Advanced Technique: “Go for the Tail”

Lately, software and service companies have been moving aggressively into the paid search

advertising game, some armed with ambitious business plans and fueled by venture capital

It’s now fairly common to hear such companies advocating the benefits of bidding on 50,000, 100,000, and even a million keywords and phrases Although this strategy might make

sense for large retailers with broad-based catalogs, I’m always surprised when I hear this strategy

FIGURE 9-1 Google is experimenting with the best way of suggesting negative keywords to

power users Their current, coy method is one you should stay on top of

being recommended for small to midsized companies, or companies with a relatively narrow offering.

The logic goes something like this Most advertisers are ignoring the huge numbers of highly specific phrases that are typed by search engine users By examining server logs for referral phrases coming from the regular (or organic) Google Search results, we can see that in some industries, obscure phrases with only one or two referrals per month might make up 50% or more

of overall visits to a website By entering as many as possible of these phrases into a campaign, the argument goes, the average CPC will come down, and ROI will increase markedly If the most obvious, frequently searched keywords form the “fat part of the curve” on a search frequency distribution graph, then the large number of infrequently searched terms can be called the tail; hence, to focus on these is called “going for the tail.” I also call this the “keyword dump methodology.”

One problem with the tail chase is simply factual If your “tail words” only make up 5%, rather than 50%, of your commercially viable search queries, then the attempt to find all of them can be overrated

I agree with the premise—indeed, the fact that a high number of unique queries are typed in

by search engine users has been fundamental to my approach to AdWords since day one But I don’t necessarily think it follows that the average advertiser will see a significant improvement

in performance by aggressively going for the tail using word-generation software I believe such overkill can be a distraction from a healthy focus on a variety of determinants of success or failure of a campaign At the end of the day, it depends on the nature of your business, and the resources you have at hand

The first thing to remember is that by using phrase and broad match, advertisers are reaching much of the tail anyway That’s the whole purpose of matching options What proponents of the keyword dump methodology will now say is that the bidding process on AdWords may allow you

to reach that tail more inexpensively than if you used phrase match Perhaps this is true to some

small extent, but it is all too often exaggerated Advertising on exact phrases like find me a good

hotel near Houston, because it showed up in your server logs as a search referral, or because

some software generated this as one of a million variations, is certainly an option But you’ll still be competing for position with others in the hotel industry (for example, advertisers using

a two-word broad match including the words hotel and Houston), and you’ll still find the

CPC expensive

A real drawback to going for the tail so aggressively emerges in your tracking and post-click analytics process If you decide to track everything by keyword, you’ll be left looking through sheaves of results that show numbers of impressions and clicks in the single digits Worse still,

if you use an automated method that determines how long to keep a phrase running, you could

be overanalyzing and turning good phrases off based on random user behavior on phrases with tiny sample sizes The typical revenue associated with one of these phrases will be zero; every

so often, there will be a purchase, possibly a large one, on a highly specific phrase Who is to say

that this highly specific phrase was actually the cause of this purchase? One purchase could lead

you to overestimate the value of a certain phrase for months or years to come That’s why I think it’s safer to think in terms of groups of related words

Clearly one of the real drawbacks to using the keyword dump methodology is that the task

of interpreting and acting on such fragmented results is too unwieldy for even a hard-working

analyst To this argument, tail-chasers will respond that they facilitate analysis by ensuring that

similar keywords are grouped Some will refer to patent-pending linguistic technology that helps

them group words—without mentioning that Google’s own technology in this area is likely to

be offered to advertisers within a year or two (and already is, to the extent that the keyword

suggestion tool shows related words that you might want to consider); being thorough in the

“torso”; and making smart use of matching options

Final consideration: going for the tail too early can hurt account-wide Quality Score Hardly the low-risk proposition it’s often billed as

So we’ve really come full circle By grouping keywords, and tracking based on those groups (assuming the software that attempts to automate these “groupings” actually works), we’re back

to the methodology I’ve been recommending all along: developing an AdWords strategy that

revolves around groups of like keywords

Building on Success: Hypothesize, Extrapolate, and Profit

One of the easiest things you can do to increase profitable click volume is to look again at your

successes and try to build on them It’s easier to do this if you’ve made discoveries that are based

on testing a particular theory

I hope a couple of brief examples will give you the flavor of this kind of “determine what works, then do more of it” method of experimenting FourOxen and I are always pinpointing

which types of online searchers are likely to be their most profitable customers We don’t have

all the answers, but we have been able to make a couple of interesting discoveries using common

sense first, followed by data analysis

Recall from Chapter 6 that FourOxen is in a hotly competitive Internet-related service business One of the few differentiators we could identify with FourOxen’s service offering amid a

sea of competitors was that they pride themselves on superior customer service (Notwithstanding

the fact that my colleagues at Future Now rightly point out that customer service is generally a

pretty weak fallback in an otherwise-undifferentiated product strategy.) Since many advanced

users view the service as a commodity to be bought as cheaply as possible, it was becoming

rapidly evident that targeting these savvier customers—at least when we were paying a lot per

click to do so—was a money-losing proposition I proposed that newbies seem like FourOxen’s

best AdWords prospects These customers would be attracted by advertisements that promised

integrity and more hand-holding as opposed to ads promising rock-bottom pricing

To give that theory a solid test, I added more and more phrases that were the types of things that a confused, “unhip,” new person to the particular technology in question might type into

Google I even tried certain very broad phrases indicating an interest in starting up a new web

venture, such as new web, and many others besides Some of the terms, as advanced users

might see them, would be considered mistakes or at least very awkward ways of expressing the

“correct” idea No matter If a newbie typed it in, I wanted to show them this ad

The theory proved correct The cost per new order for these kinds of keywords was significantly lower than the cost per new order on the rest of the campaign That meant our work wasn’t done

Since we had strong evidence that the newbie theory was correct, the trick was to go out and find

more of them Keyword discovery in this particular realm—“newbie words”—is ongoing

Another area that we tested was various relevant brand names and trade names (“industry words” or “competitor words”) In spite of the ongoing legal controversies over the use of such keywords to trigger relevant ads near search results, we do know that they’re often effective lead generators Here again, the effectiveness of this group proved itself quite readily, so our job is to continue with keyword discovery as long as we can find new ones of this type.

If we find that performance begins to degrade in either of these groups, we’ll take a hard look

at recently added words that might be the culprit As the groups get very large, it makes sense to subdivide them to test further distinctions and microtheories about what works even within this narrow realm Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean you have to track each and every keyword

Upping the Bid and Movin’ On Up

Certainly, it is likely going to cost you more to up your bids as a means of gaining more click volume Many business owners reject the strategy out of hand But at a certain point it’s time to take a harder look at your allowable cost per acquisition, and other assumptions If you’re thinking

of moving up into a new ’hood, you might need to change a few things—better haircut, new clothes, finer wines, etc But seriously: if you can make fundamental changes to your business so that higher CPCs are now palatable to you, the “bid higher” strategy is not to be discounted Let’s start with the less drastic changes, and then touch on some more advanced considerations

If some of your ad groups are performing at a significantly lower cost per acquisition than others, it doesn’t make sense to keep the bids low on such groups just for the sake of frugality

If your average ad position is, say, 3.3 on one of these successful groups, you might want to find out how much more you need to bid to push it to 2.8, or 2.1, and whether raising the average position creates an unacceptably high cost per acquisition

To keep bids too low means you’re generating too few potentially profitable clicks But at some juncture, you will have raised bids to the point where the additional clicks cost too much There is

no hard-and-fast rule for how to approach this, and results may fluctuate from month to month But clearly, leaving one part of your campaign with very low bids if its ROI is particularly strong makes little sense Generally speaking there shouldn’t be vast disparities in ROI across a campaign An

ad group’s ROI can indeed be too good An ROI of 400% might simply be an indicator that your volume is too low in that part of the campaign and that you need to bid more to increase clicks

Remember, total profit can go up even if your ROI goes down, if sales volume increases enough.

Let’s get into a couple of considerations that will help you move your bids up so that you’re

in ad positions 1–3 for your core keywords, even though this currently seems unaffordable We’ll

go into these points in more depth later, in Chapter 11, which covers increasing conversion rates

Launch a Conversion Improvement Program

Short of changing jobs or changing your whole business model, the best way to be able to afford the higher CPCs associated with higher ad positions is to raise conversion rates (the ratio of clicks to sales or leads) This process isn’t magic—it’s mostly science But a good degree of creativity and testing will be required to improve landing pages Even sophisticated multivariate testing is open to the average advertiser, now that Google offers a free tool called Website Optimizer Simple A/B testing can be effective, too, especially if you have lower sales volumes

Focus on Web Credibility, Online Reputation, and Repeat Business

Strict conversion improvement testing on particular landing pages is one thing, but you need

to be thinking about related user dynamics and customer interactions as well Especially when

selling higher-ticket items, you need to disclose more about your company and soothe user

concerns about security and trust issues Go beyond your own site to research your online

reputation to make sure rumors aren’t creating unseen objections in consumers’ minds Work on

your upsell and repeat sales channels and tactics The baseline fact is: click costs will continue to

rise Tweaking bids and such will do little to keep you in the race if you don’t also take multiple

steps to increase your average revenues per customer

Content-Targeted, or Contextual, Ads:

Take a Second Look

As I explained in Chapter 2, at one time, online advertising brokers (or “networks”) such as

DoubleClick played an important role on the Web, allowing advertisers to place large banner

ad buys without having to approach individual publishers and giving publishers access to more

advertisers Today, these first-generation online ad brokers are rapidly being displaced by the

second wave: programs like Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Quigo, ContextWeb,

and several smaller players (Google has acquired DoubleClick, to put an exclamation point on

the story of this trend.)

Ads Appearing near Content

Having regularly insisted they’d stay “laser-focused on search,” Google surprised some

observers in March 2003 by launching an ad network that pays publishers for displaying ads that

look very similar to standard Google AdWords ads If you’re an advertiser, the option to display

your ad on these publishers’ sites appears as the Content Network check box in your campaign

settings area; you’ll be asked if you want content targeting turned on or off (see Figure 9-2) The

content targeting program came under a lot of fire early on due to its spotty quality, but today it

has reached a new stage of refinement and many of the old problems are a thing of the past

How does content targeting work? As with many things that Google does, the exact formula

is proprietary One thing’s clear: it doesn’t work the same as the ads appearing next to search

results The key thing to understand is you’re essentially going through a stripped-down media

buying process to buy online display ads (often but not always in text format) at various

publisher sites around the Web

With content targeting (sometimes called contextual advertising), the keywords in your account still serve a purpose Google’s semantic matching technology uses these keywords,

along with the amount you bid, to decide whether or not your ad is relevant enough to show on a

particular page The semantic matching technology “reads” pages for meaning; it isn’t just pure

algorithmic keyword matching Ads are selected on the fly as the code on the publisher’s page

loads the Google AdSense ad creative These ad creatives (creative is an online ad industry term

for the size and shape of an advertising unit) can vary in size, but they take up the same screen

real estate as the graphical ad banners that were once ubiquitous online Other units, such as banners, animated banners, and interactive banners that operate using JavaScript code (called Google Gadgets, or generically in the industry, widgets), are now also available through the same Google AdWords platform Under Create New Ad in the Ads tab of your ad group, Google lists several options, including text ads, image ads (also known as banner ads), video ads, local business ads, and mobile ads Under image ads, just as an example, Google offers eight banner sizes and allows you to upload files in any of four file formats (see Figure 9-3).

Google has now rolled out a new twist that helps you control your placements more precisely: placement targeting Essentially, you are able to use both keywords and your own specific site choices to plan where your ads show up In selecting placements, Google offers a menu of sites that you can choose to show up on, and will allow you to enter a maximum bid for each of those placements Note that in the campaign settings you’ll be asked to choose to show your ads either “on sites from the entire network” or “only on sites I select.” Personally, I’ve grown fond of the wider reach of the “entire network” approach of classic content targeting, since it contains a smart, keyword-matching element But more precise targeting is the only thing that will work for some companies

FIGURE 9-2 Campaign settings with content targeting across the network turned on

Online content is not restricted to any particular format So-called contextual ads can be placed near discussion forum content, email messages, articles, or, as the example from the

online photo sharing site Flickr (see Figure 9-4) shows, thematically tagged images As an

advertiser, you’ll need to be flexible in how you think about content, because chances are you’ll

have the opportunity to show your AdWords ads in a lot of different places in the coming years

The price you pay for any given click isn’t easy to pin down, but your average costs are reported clearly in the main ad group views; more detailed breakdowns are available under the

Reporting tab It’s not an auction in the same sense as the search ad program You won’t pay

more than your maximum bid, but how much less than your bid you wind up paying can be

determined by another proprietary Google formula Essentially, Google has improved the quality

of its ad network by firing some publishers, and simply reducing payouts to other publishers

whose inventory has tended to convert poorly for advertisers

Google has also begun disclosing more about the types of content your ads appear near If you’re using Google Conversion Tracker, the “content types” report will show you CTRs, spend,

and conversion rates on parked domain pages, error pages, and other offbeat forms of content

Google also shows you whether your ads are showing near news stories on sensitive topics, like

FIGURE 9-3 Setup screen for Google image ads, a format allowable under content targeting

death and tragedy, or adult or suggestive content You can now opt out of showing ads on any of these subsets of content Control is at the campaign level.

After having experimented extensively with contextual ads, I can confirm that these ads do provide many advertisers significant opportunities to increase the profitable click volume in their

AdWords accounts But the big if here is this: it will likely prove profitable for many of you if

you’re able to bid lower on content targeting than you do on your ads that appear near search listings As discussed previously, Google now offers content bidding, enabled within Campaign Settings Don’t forget to bid separately on all of your content-targeted placements, and measure and monitor their performance separately

Even more effective, if you have the time, is to mirror your search campaigns with entirely separate content-targeted campaigns This facilitates separate tracking, but another thing this does is allow you to experiment with different ad creative than you use in search Because a user’s intent is far different in a contextual ad (often you are interrupting users rather than being searched for), often the psychology is different To be frank, search is a medium to be treated

as kind of sacred ground, because that’s how Google’s users (and algorithms) see it Content, rightly or wrongly, is more amenable to gimmickry and salesmanship in ad copy It’s not right for every brand, but you may want to try a variety of styles of text copy You might also want to

FIGURE 9-4 Ads by Google appearing near photos on Yahoo-owned Flickr

dip your toe into the world of animated banners and other creative formats, including larger ones

The tragedy of the commons is that this “scorched earth” treatment of online display ad spaces

by advertisers means users have developed banner blindness But for your purposes, you’ll need

to consider strategies to break through this blindness

Low CTRs on Content Placements Don’t Impact Quality Score

Another thing to keep in mind with content targeting is that CTRs will typically be much lower

than with your search ads Do not panic! AdWords does not count CTRs from content targeting

against the performance of your account So you won’t rank lower on your keywords because of

these low CTRs Google uses only search ads to calculate CTRs for ranking purposes

Special Case: Ads in Gmail and Other Google Properties

Did someone say Google isn’t just about search anymore? They now offer Gmail, a fast, innovative,

web-based email service that offers virtually unlimited storage In exchange for a free account,

users accept that Google will show ads in the right-hand margin of the interface and sometimes

at the top of the page While some observers fret about privacy issues inherent in customizing

ads to the content of email discussions, many users find the ads to be nonintrusive, similar to the

familiar AdWords ads near search results

Ads appearing in Gmail are part of the overall content targeting program Undoubtedly, Google will beef up its reporting and opt-out capabilities in this area, as they’ve done with

parked domains and sensitive content Like the contextual ads discussed previously, ads in Gmail

are matched with the content of emails based on a semantic matching technology Google doesn’t

disclose One handy feature of Gmail is the threading of conversations, which makes it easier to

refer back to previous emails in a series I’ve noticed that as a conversation gets longer—as more

emails back and forth start to pile up—the matching technology is more precise Ads seem to get

more relevant by the third or fourth email in the exchange

What I’ve said about ads in Gmail also applies to various Google-owned properties, such

as YouTube For the most part, they are simply part of the content targeting program, but there

seem to be ongoing mysteries in how Google handles them How Google handles placement and

reporting on your ads showing up on Google-owned properties outside of Google Search seems

to change regularly I expect more disclosure and control to be added in the future For more on

Google’s ever-expanding list of products and services, see Chapter 12

Advanced Uses of Content Targeting: Current Affairs

In certain cases, content targeting proves to be more suitable than search targeting A case study

presented by TV cable network Comedy Central at the Search Engine Strategies conferences in

2007 points to an example of an innovative use of content targeting This media company was

trying to promote its television content—for example, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart—in

innovative ways Comedy Central believed that timely current affairs topics would be excellent

complements to The Daily Show’s newsy focus The problem with focusing only on search

targeting is that the related keywords might be prohibitively expensive In addition, such terms

might be deemed “irrelevant” by Google’s Quality Score algorithm, making it less likely that