Marketing on the WebI have advised clients for some time to just say no to Google’s content network. Historically, click fraud was high and returns were low. I was at Google in December and the consensus of advertisers seemed to be that Google has gone a long way toward cleaning out the riff-raff.
So, it may be time to re-think advertising on the content network. Here’s some good reading:
- How Google, Yahoo Content Ad Matching Really Works
- Content Advertising Best Practices in Action
- Content Advertising Explained
If you decide to go down this path, I encourage you to run ‘placement performance’ reports routinely to see which sites are performing, and aggressively exclude sites that fail to perform. You can exclude specific sites using the utility in your AdWords account under >Tools > Site Exclusion.
I continue to review active campaigns and while I believe that content advertising would be good for the right product or company, I can’t find any campaigns among 4 clients that are performing. I do have some “placement” ads that are doing well — John