Google Adwords Mastery » Content Network http://googleadwordsmastery.com Gaining competitive advantage through Google Adwords Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:33:02 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Introducing the Google Display Network http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/ATHs/~3/xeB_FQlEDL0/introducing-google-display-network.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/ATHs/~3/xeB_FQlEDL0/introducing-google-display-network.html#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:45:00 +0000 Geoff Alexander Over the past year, we’ve been focused on investing in display advertising, and we’ve seen great momentum from the increasing number of you running display campaigns with Google. We’ve rolled out new features and targeting options and more precise measurement tools. To provide more places for you to run display ads, we’ve added more publisher sites (through Google AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange) to our ad network of over one million sites. Meanwhile, many of you have continued to run ads on YouTube and our own properties. In an effort to make our display media offerings clearer to advertisers like you and agencies, we’re creating a new umbrella name for all these properties, the Google Display Network. 

The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites (apart from search sites), where you can buy ads through Google, including YouTube, Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, Blogger as well as over one million Web, video, gaming, and mobile display partners (our display partners include all of our AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange partner sites that allow text and/or display ads). The Google Display Network offers all ad formats -  text, image, rich media, and video ads - enabling you to unleash your creativity and engage potential customers across the Web. 

You can run ads on the Google Display Network the same way you always have. Either place bids through AdWords or make reservations on YouTube and Google Finance with the help of a Google account team.

In the upcoming weeks, you’ll see a change in the AdWords interface reflecting this new term, and you’ll see Google Display Network where you might have seen Google Content Network mentioned. We’ve also launched a new website showcasing the sites and benefits available to you on the Google Display Network. 

We’re working hard to offer the best display advertising solutions and we look forward to introducing new features on the Google Display Network that help you reach your advertising goals. 

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management
]]> http://googleadwordsmastery.com/index.php/2010/06/introducing-the-google-display-network/feed/ 0 New Ad Planner features: the Ad Planner 1,000 and greater integration with AdWords http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/ATHs/~3/m466dgSIno8/new-ad-planner-features-ad-planner-1000.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/ATHs/~3/m466dgSIno8/new-ad-planner-features-ad-planner-1000.html#comments Wed, 26 May 2010 23:55:00 +0000 Geoff Alexander
Today, we’re introducing several new features that integrate DoubleClick Ad Planner data with other Google advertising solutions. These features help streamline the process of planning and building online ad campaigns and give you useful data for making more informed media planning decisions.

Ad Planner Top 1,000 Most Visited Sites
One of these new key releases is the Ad Planner 1000 list, a list of the top 1,000 global sites on the web by unique users as measured by Ad Planner. Published monthly, this list details the number of unique visitors, number of page views, and reach for each of the sites included. It’s a great way to quickly reference the most popular sites on the web.

The Ad Planner 1000 list is another step in the evolution of Ad Planner in providing reliable traffic and audience information for websites. In conjunction with it, the Google Content Network just released an Ad Planner 1,000 targeting feature. We hope that the combination of these two features helps provide you with more actionable data to use in your display ad campaigns.

Exporting Google Content Network Placements to AdWords
We’ve heard from many of you that you’d like to be able to easily buy Google Content Network placements that you find through Ad Planner. With the newly launched Export to AdWords feature, you can now simply export Google Content Network placements from Ad Planner into AdWords. These exported placements will be set up as a new campaign or ad group within your AdWords account. If you’re running text ads or display ads on the Google Content Network, this is an easy way to build media plans of managed placements.

Creating Lists in Ad Planner
To help you create your own list of favorite sites to save and add to your media plans, we’ve also recently launched ‘Lists’ in Ad Planner. With ‘Lists’, you can store sites and placements in lists for future use in media plans. To get you started, we’ve made the Ad Planner 1,000 list available to all Ad Planner accounts as both an online reference and as a downloadable file.

Our goal with the AdPlanner 1000 and other recent updates is to offer you new tools that allow you to plan more efficiently, and more data so that you can make more informed advertising decisions.

Visit www.google.com/adplanner to check out the new features.

Posted by Rohit Kundaji, Software Engineer and Wayne Lin, Product Manager
]]> http://googleadwordsmastery.com/index.php/2010/05/new-ad-planner-features-the-ad-planner-1000-and-greater-integration-with-adwords/feed/ 0 New tool for brand advertisers on the Google Content Network http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/ATHs/~3/obN82PHnVDI/new-tool-for-brand-advertisers-on.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/ATHs/~3/obN82PHnVDI/new-tool-for-brand-advertisers-on.html#comments Wed, 26 May 2010 23:17:00 +0000 Geoff Alexander frequency capping to help you manage how often your Content Network campaigns reach the right people. We then launched an “above the fold” filter to allow you to show ads only in places that appear on potential customers’ screens when the page loads. We also developed innovative tools to measure the impact of brand campaigns.

Today, in response to feedback from many of you who run branding campaigns, we're announcing a new filter that allows you to show your ads only on AdSense sites among the 1000 largest on the web, as defined by DoubleClick Ad Planner. This new feature will ensure that your ads reach a large number of users, but only on well-known sites best suited for branding goals.

To activate the new filter, select ‘non Ad Planner 1000’ within the ‘category filters’ section of your AdWords account. Keep in mind that not all sites in the Ad Planner 1000 are in the Google Content Network and that your ads will only show on those sites that are.

It's important to note that the Ad Planner 1000 does not take performance statistics into account, and that by enabling this filter, you may be excluding many sites that are relevant to your advertised products. Additionally, with this or any of our other brand filters enabled, your campaign will run on fewer sites, so you may need to raise your bids if you’d like to maintain your impression levels. We recommend experimenting to determine which feature or combination of features best meets your goals.

We hope this new feature gives you greater control and assurance over where your ads appear and makes the Google Content Network an even more powerful environment for effective branding campaigns.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew
]]> http://googleadwordsmastery.com/index.php/2010/05/new-tool-for-brand-advertisers-on-the-google-content-network/feed/ 0 Improvements to view-through conversion reporting for display campaigns http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/ATHs/~3/t6heRV9xs5E/improvements-to-view-through-conversion.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/ATHs/~3/t6heRV9xs5E/improvements-to-view-through-conversion.html#comments Mon, 24 May 2010 20:20:00 +0000 Geoff Alexander This week, we’re making two new feature enhancements to our view-through conversion reporting to help you more effectively measure the ROI of your display campaigns on the Google Content Network. View-through conversion reporting, which we launched last year, helps you measure the conversions that result from users who have seen but not clicked on your display ads. The enhancements we’re making will allow you to customize this reporting to better fit your needs.

Customizable view-through conversion window. You’ll be able to set a custom range for the window of time for which you’d like view-through conversions reported. Previously, this window was set to 30 days, meaning we reported on the number of view-through conversions that occurred up to 30 days after a user saw your ad. Now, you’ll be able to customize this time-frame, based on what makes sense for your product or service. For example, if you’re a local pizza shop looking for users to download a coupon and order a pizza, users will generally respond to your ad within a day or two after seeing it. In this case, you might set a reporting window that’s much shorter than if you were an auto dealership, for example, as it may take several weeks before a user schedules a test-drive, given the a longer sales cycle for automobiles.

De-duplication of search conversion reporting. In addition, you’ll also have the option to exclude reporting for view-through conversions that are duplicated across both the Search and Content Networks. If you enable this feature, we will exclude from your view-through conversion reports conversions that come from users who have also clicked your search ads. These conversions will only be attributed to your search ads.

If you decide to apply these settings for your campaigns, please note that they will affect data moving forward in your account.

We believe these improvements will make view-through conversion reporting more accurate and actionable for you. If you’re using view-through conversion tracking today, we recommend you evaluate these two new options and implement them based on your needs. However, try to avoiding flipping back and forth between enabling and disabling these settings as this can muddy the usefulness of your campaign metrics.

If you’re advertising using display ads on the Google Content Network, but are new to view-through conversion tracking, we encourage you to implement it to more effectively track the ROI of your display campaigns. Remember, display ads often drive performance beyond immediate clicks and conversions, like from users who may visit your site and make a purchase after seeing your display ad, even if they haven’t clicked. Learn more in our Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew
]]> http://googleadwordsmastery.com/index.php/2010/05/improvements-to-view-through-conversion-reporting-for-display-campaigns/feed/ 0 Reminder: Upcoming webinar on display advertising opportunities http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/ATHs/~3/F7zGlWbEMHI/reminder-upcoming-webinar-on-display.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/ATHs/~3/F7zGlWbEMHI/reminder-upcoming-webinar-on-display.html#comments Mon, 17 May 2010 22:08:00 +0000 Geoff Alexander
Join us on May 20, 2010 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST.

Specifically, we’ll discuss:
  • Google's vision and recent innovations in display advertising
  • How to best take advantage of our offerings, from planning to improving your campaigns
  • How advertisers are incorporating the Google Content Network into their marketing strategy
Hope to see you there!

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew
]]> http://googleadwordsmastery.com/index.php/2010/05/reminder-upcoming-webinar-on-display-advertising-opportunities/feed/ 0 New best practices to find more customers on the Google Content Network http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/ATHs/~3/CPFPGj7k_Hc/new-best-practices-to-find-more.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/ATHs/~3/CPFPGj7k_Hc/new-best-practices-to-find-more.html#comments Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:10:00 +0000 Geoff Alexander previous post in the Content Network Optimization University series covered the basics of setting up and launching a good campaign on the Content Network.

Today, we'll cover more advanced optimization strategies. We've compiled these by observing best practices from the most successful advertisers on the network. Whether you're new to the Content Network or have been using it for a while, you can get better results from your campaigns by employing some of these strategies.

Build effective campaigns

Taking time up front to set up your campaign correctly goes a long way in getting higher quality traffic to your site. Let’s recap the top strategies:
  • Separate Search and Content Network campaigns: Setting up a separate campaign just for the Content Network will give you more control over daily budgets, ad groups, keywords and bids. Watch this demo on campaign setup.
  • Create many, tightly themed ad groups: AdWords can target your ads more precisely if you build multiple ad groups, each with a small tightly-themed set of 5 to 20 keywords. Watch this demo on ad group setup and this demo on keyword selection.
  • Copy your best performing text ads from Search campaigns: For initial setup, it's best to use the text ads with the highest click-through rates from your search campaigns. Watch this demo on ad text best practices.
  • Setup the same starting CPC bid as your Search campaigns: We recommend starting with the same maximum CPC bid as your Search campaign ad groups. Once AdWords has collected enough data, our smart pricing technology will automatically optimize your bids on the Content Network to give you more profitable clicks. Watch this demo on bidding tactics.
  • Set up AdWords Conversion Tracking on your website: Install Conversion Tracking on your website to measure the sales and leads (conversions) you get from each ad group and placement. Watch this demo to learn how conversion tracking works on the Content Network.
Optimize for better results

It's important to monitor your campaign’s performance and consistently optimize individual elements. Before making significant changes (e.g. changing bids, excluding high volume sites, pausing ad groups), wait until enough click or conversion data has accrued. We recommend having at least 5 conversions or 100 clicks per site.
  • Exclude poor-performing sites: Get more qualified traffic and boost conversions by excluding sites that perform poorly for your campaign, based on the number of clicks, the average CPC and the number of conversions.
  • Focus your keywords and exclude less relevant keywords: Add more keywords that describe your product and ad group theme in greater detail. Also, add negative keywords to refine your targeting and prevent impressions on irrelevant sites. Watch this demo on refining your campaigns.
  • Adjust your bids to manage your costs: Change your bids for ad groups or individual sites based on conversion rate, average CPC and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) to meet your performance goals. You should bid higher for better performing sites to get more traffic, and lower for poorly performing sites.
  • Use Conversion Optimizer to manage your CPA: Google Conversion Optimizer is a free tool that automatically manages bids at the site level to reach a maximum CPA bid, which is the amount you're willing to pay for a conversion (such as a purchase or sign-up). Watch this video on how to use Conversion Optimizer.
Expand your campaign for more traffic

To get additional traffic and boost sales from your campaign, we recommend creating a keyword expansion strategy for the Content Network.
  • Use the Wonder Wheel tool for ad group ideas: You can use Wonder Wheel on Google Search to brainstorm new ad group themes and keyword ideas. When you search for any topic on Google.com, Wonder Wheel will generate up to eight related topics for you to consider.
  • Create new ad groups to reach additional parts of the network: Each topic in Wonder Wheel represents a possible ad group theme for your campaign. Simply click on any of the topics to see other searches and themes related to it. Any closely related topics that are less relevant to your product are great candidates for your negative keyword list. Watch this demo to learn how to use this strategy.
  • Expand your keyword list to get more traffic: Once you have finalized your ad group themes, use the AdWords Keyword Tool to get keyword ideas. Enter ad group theme descriptions or keywords under the 'Descriptive words or phrases' tab. Select the 5 to 10 most frequently searched keywords and save them to your ad group This will help to ensure that your list stays highly relevant to your ad group theme.
You can find all the latest videos and updates on our YouTube channel. We hope these tips help you get even better results from your Content network campaigns!

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew
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