Posted on June 25, 2007
Google Reveals Content Network Site Performance
BY BEN CASTELLI
I was finally able to catch up on some of the latest news in my reader over the weekend and was really psyched to see that Google has begun a phased launch of their Placement Performance report for Adwords. Several months ago Google announced it would be adding this new feature which basically allows you to “view site-by-site performance metrics -- including clicks, impressions, cost, and conversion data -- for domains or URLs in the content network where your ads have appeared.”
Overall, with our clients we see that the Pay Per Click ads on Google Search convert better (with a better ROI) than ads on the Google Content network. Ads on Google Search show up on the top and right hand side of the page when you do a search in Google, content network ads show on websites running Ad Sense (such as news and blog sites) that have content relevant to your keywords.
One of the biggest challenges I have had with running ads on the content network is that a major news story or popular event can trigger ads to receive a huge spike in impressions and clicks but not necessarily an increase in conversions. Without the ability to see which sites were driving all of the clicks, the only option was to scale back your bids on the content network or turn off the content network altogether.
Now with the Placement Performance report, you can see which content network sites are converting well and those that are not. You can use the site exclusion tool to eliminate sites that drive a lot of clicks but little conversions. And increase ad spend on the sites that drive the quality traffic that results in conversions and high ROI. This is accomplished with the site targeting feature.
I have also seen similar trends with ads on the Yahoo Search Marketing content network, where a news event triggers ads to receive a large increase in impressions, resulting in a large number of clicks with very few conversions. Hopefully Yahoo will continue to their strategy of copying the Google PPC platform and add this feature!
Actually, Yahoo recently did take one step to improving their content network by introducing Quality Based Pricing, realizing that all clicks from the content network are not created equal, something Google has been doing for a long time with their Smart Pricing.
So rather than shutting off your ads from showing on the Google content network when your cost per acquisition is high and ROI low, use this new transparency to improve your content network strategy by optimizing your ad for specific sites or weeding out sites that drive a lot of clicks but do not convert.
