JumpFly Blog: AdWords, Yahoo & Microsoft Advertising

I would like to use today’s blog to highlight what I have witnessed to be the most hazardous mistake made by new PPC advertisers, and that is disregard for Content Match. Content Matching is a PPC advertising option that places paid listings on web pages containing “relevant” content, rather than within search engine results. When properly managed, I have seen Content Match prove tremendously successful, but when ignored, this feature can destroy an account’s results, and tragically lead an advertiser to falsely conclude that PPC advertising did not work for their business.

One critical thing for PPC advertisers to know is that Content Match is launched automatically in new accounts established at Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter. If this feature is not manually turned off, the advertiser’s ads will run on the Content Network with the same bids set for search. This can result in the majority of an advertiser’s budget unintentionally getting spent on Content Match.

For those seeking to test Content Match, there are several critical measures I would strongly suggest:

1. Create an Isolated Content Campaign
2. Run the Placement Report periodically to make sure there are not any
under-performing or inappropriate sites & make necessary adjustments.
3. Test strategies separate from search - the keywords and ad copy appropriate for a content campaign can be very different than that of a search campaign.
4. Do not use the KeyWord Insertion Tool in Content Campaign Ads.

Based on the hundreds of campaigns that I have reviewed at JumpFly, I have determined that Content Matching requires isolation and special attention for maximized results. Reduced conversion rates and lower CTRs should be expected. Therefore, decreased bids are generally required to maintain a cost per conversion similar to that achieved from search results. Finally, when used properly, Content Matching can be a powerful tool for branding, as it often provides a large number of impressions and significant exposure.

Google AdWords made a small update to their Campaign summary screen that is worth taking a look at.  We haven’t seen this change made in all of our accounts, but we know they will all have this functionality in the future so it’s worth mentioning now.

On the right side of the Campaign summary screen, there is now a drop down box to the right of a “Statistics” notation.  You can look look at your campaign in several different ways right from this screen.  You can choose four different views from this dropdown: All (Search + Content), Search, Content or Summary.

All (Search + Content) now allows you to view your Search and Content data separately, so you can get a quicker insight into what your Search CTR is without it getting mixed in with the Content data.  It was also quickly indicate that Content is Off if you are not running Content.  This is a nice way to quickly check all of your campaigns to make sure Content is On or Off, depending on how you want your campaigns structured.

Search allows you to isolate your Search results from Content, to again give you a quicker, cleaner picture of Search results.

Contents allows you to isolate your Content into a Content-only view.  You can quickly see if Content may be eating more of your budget than you realized.

Summary is the standard way of viewing your data that you are used to seeing, where it combines Search and Content data together in one lump sum for each column category.

Of course, we would recommend you isolate Content into its own campaign with its own budget, but if you do have both Search and Content running in some older campaigns that you don’t want to restructure, then this is a nice way to get at the segmented data quickly.

You can find more info from Google here or here.

Looking for some additional PPC traffic, but not sure where to go to get it?  It really is time to try a Google Content campaign if you haven’t done so yet.  Even if you’ve tried it historically and it didn’t work, it really is worth taking another look.  I’ve started several new Google Content campaigns for my clients over the last few months and each one has delivered solid conversions.

We had really stayed away from Google Content for quite some time due to lack of performance, lack of control over which sites your ads show on, which sites you could block, etc.  But now with all the new controls in place, with Google seeming to have placed a greater emphasis on bringing in some quality sites to the Google Content Network,  it’s time for you to give it a good go.

Here’s a method I’ve used that has worked surprisingly well for me.  I look historically across all my current Google ad groups for a client, copy only those ad groups and keywords that prove to be solid performers, then put them in their own separate Google Content campaign.  I usually cut the bids approximately in half, put a tight cap on the budget to start off with, then let it fly.

May sound simplistic, but I know it works because I’ve seen the results with my clients time and time again.  Give it try in your Google AdWords accounts.  You may be pleasantly surprised at the new customer base you find.