Conquering The Content Network (Google)
Almost every month, a new thread is started on Wickedfire on how to handle the Google Content Network. Let me be the first to say that, yes - the content network can be confusing if you’re new to it. It doesn’t help that Google includes it by default in every new campaign and that it must be disabled manually from every search campaign.
This post is mostly a recap of answers I have given to members of Wickedfire when content network questions have come up. I hope this will be helpful to those of you who still struggle to understand it, and that you can set up your first profitable campaigns on content with the use of this info.
First of all, when creating a new campaign for the content network - disable the Search network. You want your content network campaign to only bring in contextual traffic.
Second, you don’t wanna load up thousands of keywords to a content campaign without some organization to it all. So let’s get started with my personal list of tips…
1) Keep the number of keywords per adgroup low (15-30, no more than 50) and closely related
2) Google ignores phrase and exact match on Content, so you need to rely on your negative keyword list to narrow down the matches. 
So if one of your keywords are “widget investments”, your ad may also show up on sites talking about forex investments and property investments. In that case, you need to add “forex” and “property” as negative keywords. This to better target your ads, reduce the amount of curious (but not serious) tire-kickers, increase your CTR and conversion rate.
3) Build up a large negative keyword list for each adgroup (and it may not be wise to re-use the same neg. kw list for all adgroups because you may accidentally block out things unintentionally). Put just as much care into building a good negative keyword list as you do building your regular kw list. The purpose of the negatives is to filter away sites that may have SOME of your words on them - but are irrelevant to your offer.
4) Google looks at the keywords in your adgroup as well as your actual ad in order to figure out where to place your ad, so make sure your ad contains (or is themed to) the keywords for that adgroup. Google will then, based on the most common “theme” of your keywords, assign your adgroup to a certain category on their network. You can download a list of these categories here.
Whenever I plan a new content network campaign, I use that list as a base for picking out the categories most suitable for my campaign. I then do some keyword and URL research that would be a good fit for those categories.
5) You can split-test two identical campaigns - one with CPM bidding, and one with CPC. ROI can be very different on the two bidding models, but one isn’t always better than the other.
6) I also recommend trying out site-targetting in another campaign. It requires some more work to find good sites, but there are some real goldmines to be found. I’ve found particular pages yielding 80%+ CTR on my ads.
7) Content QS is pretty much all about CTR. The trick is to find a middle ground between bringing in as many clickers as possible while filtering out non-converting tire-clickers at the same time. In short: be inventive and use shock value if need be, but also stay somewhat honest about what you are sending the clicker to.
You can have multiple campaigns and adgroups with some of the same keywords used in all of them - just not IDENTICAL adgroups or campaigns.
So one adgroup could be:
“blue widgets”
“dumb widgets”
“widgets discounts”
“widget facts”
“witgeds”
And another one could be:
“red widgets”
“dumb widgets”
“widget facts”
“widget scams”
“holiday widgets”
9) Always keep an eye on your placement reports and weed out sites with abysmal CTRs / conversions. Set aside a day or two and do some research on what sites you can target with site-targeted campaigns. It can be time-consuming to find a good list of sites or even better; specific pages to target - but it can REALLY pay off. I’ve found pages that have seen consistent 80% ctr for a very specific offer.
10) I personally also block certain sites like myspace and about.com right off the bat. They tend to bring nothing but millions of impressions and shitty ctr / no conversions.
Planning and Managing a Content Network Campaign
You need a completely different keyword approach for search vs. content. In search, you’re looking to bring in traffic based on more or less a specific product or solution the user was actively looking for.
In content, you’re trying to bring them in as they are not necessarily actively looking for an ad or a link, but you wanna have your ads present on the pages and sites they visit.
Therefore - you should research two different keyword sets. On content, you will usually have a larger negative keyword list, for example.
Having it in its own campaign also makes sense from a management point of view. You can give each campaign its own ad-scheduling and budget. Budgeting a search campaign can also be very different than budgeting a content campaign in the same niche, for the same product.
For both search and content campaigns however; always set up smaller, tight adgroups with closely related keywords (if doing keyword-based content). For placement-content, break it up into several site adgroups based on site themes and demographics.
Text ads or Image ads
I have personally always had more success with image ads in my content campaigns, but by all means - you should test text ads also. In some cases, audiences could be prone to banner blindness and take your text ads more seriously. So come up with some text ads, but also take the time to add some image ads to your adgroups. Your options are to create your own, have someone create them for you, or to use the default creatives as supplied by your network (although they’re normally not that good in my opinion).
Keyword Grouping and Adgroup Setup
I see people using keyword lists based around adding a prefix or suffix to the same root keyword.
This is an approach suitable for search campaigns, but not really for content. When deciding on keywords for a content adgroup, try to think in terms of making an adgroup for a certain sub-group of your demographic.
Using the eating vegetables example, let’s say you’re promoting an offer for a free 1-year supply of veggies. For this adgroup, we then ask ourselves:
- What types of people will be more likely to be interested in this offer and give us conversions?
- What sorts of websites do these people frequently visit?
- What keywords are most prominent on those websites?
The answer might be a list more like this:
- cooking
- vegetable
- vegetables
- veggies
- vegetarian
- vegan
- eating
- eating vegetables
- steaks
- sirloin
- carrots
- broccoli
- cucumber
- cauliflower
- boiling
- recipes
- recipe
- steaming
With a negative keyword list such as this, to supplement it:
- -growing
- -grow
- -grows
- -harvesting
- -harvest
- -planting
- -plant
- -plants
- -farming
- -farm
- -farms
- -candy
- -cookies
- -dining
- -restaurants
(assuming you don’t want your ads on sites devoted to restaurant guides, farming, or recipes for sweets)
You could get a hunch of what sites you could be placed on, by using the free Adwords Digger (requires an opt-in but you can opt-out once you’ve downloaded it). This would give you an idea of whether or not you’re on the right track with your content adgroup keyword selection.
Another great resource is Google’s new Ad Planner.
If you have such a massive list of keywords for your campaign as a whole, I would definitely try to weed out a bunch, and start out with grouping the most obvious ones. Chances are, your big list has tons of 3 or 4+ word longtails, and it will be a nightmare to write out negative keywords for them all. Remember - all content keywords are considered broad match, and phrase/exact is ignored!
So to save yourself some work, start out with the most obvious 1 or 2-keyword words and spend your time focusing on who and where, instead of generating variations off of one root keyword.
Other Good Resources
David Szetela’s Content Advertising Series. Nice articles that goes through the fundamentals as well as more advanced tips.
Also check out Adhustler’s article on his content network strategy and SlightlyShadySEO’s content network article for some great tips.
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Thanks for the plug Eskil! :)
Comment by Allen on 10 February 2009:
Excellent post! I’ve really enjoyed David Szetela’s series at SEW too…the technique about using Texanz to make tight keyword groups is money.
Got any tips for creating banner ads yourself if you’re not very good with Photoshop? I’ve had OK results doing “text like” banner ads.
Comment by ImagesAndWords on 10 February 2009:
Hey Allen,
If you’re not comfortable creating image ads yourself, I would recommend finding someone to create them for you. The “Sell, Buy & Trade” section of Wickedfire has plenty of people offering banner design services for decent prices.
But if you’re short on time and/or money however, you could always use the creatives provided to you by the advertiser or network. Your CTR may vary greatly using default creatives, but you could also ask your affiliate manager if they can provide alternate banners upon request.
I might write up another post on the basics of image ads if there’s enough interest.
Comment by Shelley Ellis on 10 February 2009:
I have a different strategy for negatives. If you use too many, you miss opportunities to have your ads near relevant conversations. I only use negative keywords when I have to and I prefer instead, to use site and category exclusions. I have had problems with Google acknowledging my negative keywords sometimes so the work around is that you can literally exclude entire categories too like: Games>>Video Games
I also like doing enhanced online campaigns targeted at MySpace and About.com but depending on the industry you are working with, those sites don’t fit every audience.
Love David’s articles. Will check out the other two you mentioned. Thanks for sharing those.
Comment by ImagesAndWords on 10 February 2009:
Shelley;
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, the use of negative keywords can be a balancing act. In the niches I have worked with, I have had to use many negatives. But I do see your point in that in some cases - one must pay close attention to what gets blocked out by the negatives.
And certainly - I’m not saying MySpace and About.com should be blindly blocked out regardlessly. These are my general guidelines that I follow and have learned from through testing and experience. But again - not every offer/niche/product/service is the same, and can be marketed a different way.
Keep up the comments, folks!
Comment by Alex Pooley on 11 February 2009:
Nice post, thanks for the info.
I’ve run image ads before on the content network, but it’s a real PITA to create banners for each size, and then run multiple variations for testing. Any experience with which sizes are the most common and which sizes I can just ignore?
Comment by itchy on 11 February 2009:
absolutely epic post man and makes so much sense now i’m finally starting to see results on the content network. one thing i’d add is that even after reading everything i could find on the content network and failing at every strategy, when it finally clicked for me was when i used “ultra small” keyword groups of just 5 or less keywords. while i don’t recommend this as a volume strategy, if you’re struggling with CN you may find it a lot more manageable when you are getting started. its similar to just bidding on 1 or 2 keywords on search. i instantly saw ctr’s above 1% working like this even in highly competitive verticals and once you get the results you want then you can expand out easily using more and more adgroups.
Comment by ImagesAndWords on 11 February 2009:
@Alex;
Yes creating many image ad variations can be cumbersome. I normally just go for the 3 most common formats first. These are 728×90, 336×280, and 468×60.
The skyscraper formats seem to be used a bit less, but when I do include one - I go for 160×600. Then, if the campaign is becoming profitable, I add the 300×250 and 120×600. I rarely bother with the small blocks or odd formats.
@itchy;
Thanks. Yes some of my best results too have come from adgroups with less keywords, like 15 or 20 words.
And CTRs can certainly get really high - at least as good as on search in many cases.
Comment by Nick on 21 February 2009:
Hey -
The Adwords Digger page is erroring on optin…they also have no contact form on their page. Did you get a contact email when you opted in that we could use to contact them and let them know that their optin isnt working?
Nick
Comment by ImagesAndWords on 22 February 2009:
Hey Nick,
Yeah I get an error there now too. I guess I could host the install here on the site for people to download, but I rather not do it without permission. Until then, you could try their contact form here:
http://www.adwordsdigger.com/support
Comment by adi on 22 March 2009:
Hello ImageAndWords,
Great post, and great blog. I found one of your posts about content network useful before 2 months. I am now able to run quite successful campaigns on content network. Thanks for your info.
I have couple of questions
You mentioned that you add negative keywords for each ADGroup. My understanding there is not a way to add -ve keywords for one specific group as they are per campaign? Unless you are running one group per campaign?
Regarding your example (eating vegetables), you came up with great keyword ideas. My feeling you proposed having all these very general keywords in one ADGroup, right? If you have all those in 1 adGroup, I truly find it hard to find more adGroups. I am currently using groups around keywords like cooking, recipes. My understanding that “cooking” can be considered a theme and I add keywords like “healthy cooking”, “meat cooking”, etc to that group to trigger ads on cooking related sites?
Again, Thanks a lot,
Adi
Comment by ImagesAndWords on 22 March 2009:
Hey adi,
Glad to hear you’re seeing some success with my tips.
Yes, I do add negative keywords per adgroup - not on the campaign level. But like you said, my example adgroup on vegetables and cooking could be considered a bit broad, and could be further separated.
So for a cooking themed adgroup, I would look for synonyms to cooking or related words like; baking, boiling, peeling, frying, serving, seasoning. Hope that makes sense.
Eskil
Comment by adi on 22 March 2009:
Hey Eskil,
Thanks for reply! Yup, that make sense.
Adi
Comment by digital on 9 April 2009:
nice post! i’ve been looking for this information, but i’m wondering do you use keywords for site targeting placement campaigns? Lets say i’m using image ads, if i understand correctly i should create two campaigns per banner, 1 for keyword targeting and 1 for site targeting?
Comment by Cataclysmic on 13 April 2009:
I’ve been advertising lately on GCN and noticed the same thing as you about the “millions of impressions and shitty ctr / no conversions” on sites like MySpace.com and About.com.
I contacted Google about this to clarify how things work.
I wrote:
“Some websites like MySpace.com and About.com get a ton of impressions but super low CTRs. If my ads are showing up on these sites, these sites dramatically decrease my overall CTRs. Is Google smart enough to know that the super low CTRs are caused by these websites and discount the effect of the low CTR on my Quality Score, or to maintain a good Quality Score would I have to prevent my ads from appearing on these websites by adding them as excluded websites?”
They responded:
“Since you are receiving low CTRs on certain sites like myspace.com and about.com, you’re wondering if these will drag down your overall CTR. Please be assured that CTR on a Google Network partner site only affects Quality Score on that site—it won’t affect Quality Score on any other partner site or on Google. So if you have a low CTR on myspace.com, this may cause you to appear less frequently on myspace.com, but it won’t affect how frequently you appear on about.com.”
SO… where you wrote “Always keep an eye on your placement reports and weed out sites with abysmal CTRs / conversions” it would actually be better to say “…weed out sites with abysmal conversions” and don’t weed out sites based on abysmal CTRs…
Is that correct, or is your experience contrary to what Google wrote back to me?
Comment by ImagesAndWords on 14 April 2009:
@digital; I only use keywords for keyword based campaigns, and URL lists for placement targeted campaigns. Setting up two sets of campaigns (one for keywords and one for sites) is something I never bother with at the start of a campaign. You could of course do this, but it comes down to how much time you wanna spend putting everything together to begin with, and where you want to focus.
@cataclysmic; I had never heard this and I’m a bit surprised to hear this statement from Google. I’m not calling B.S. or anything here, but I would love to see an official page about this on Google’s site. Sometimes the advice given out by support reps should be taken with a small grain of salt.
If this is the case however, then yes - one should weed out for conversion, not solely for CTR. In my experience, QS appears to be affected across all sites and not each one individually.
Comment by Cataclysmic on 21 April 2009:
Thanks for your response. I’ve got another question about something you wrote. You said that Google will “based on the most common “theme” of your keywords, assign your adgroup to a certain category on their network”.
Why does Google do that? How do they use the categories? How does being assigned to a certain category affect your adgroup? I haven’t been able to find anything about the categories in Google’s Adwords documentation.
Google gives the following example: “If users view a web page about building hummingbird feeders, they may see AdWords ads for hummingbird feeders or hummingbird food” (source: https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?answer=106540) Based on this example, it does not seem like they are using categories, since the categories are not so specific that they target hummingbirds. It seems like they are simply looking at the keywords/ads and putting them on relevant pages.
Thanks in advance for your answers. I’ve found this page incredibly helpful.
Comment by ImagesAndWords on 24 April 2009:
@Cataclysmic; The themes are used not only for C.N. advertisers, but also to group sites for Adsense publisher sites. I can’t seem to find the official resources right now either but I do know they use them.
I actually have a list of these categories, and I will make a new blog post with in a few days. Indeed, there is no category as specific as “hummingbird feeders”. The ads in the adgroup would still belong to a Pet–>Birds category however, and on the keyword level matched to “hummingbird”.
Look for one or two more content network posts coming shortly.
Comment by beyondadwords on 30 April 2009:
Hey great stuff guys… I have a question… Does the same approach work on Yahoo and MSN when running keyword targeted content campaigns?
Pingback by New AdWords Networks (Placements) View - Long Live The Content Network! | Wanted: Internet Marketers on 23 June 2009:
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Comment by PPC Guru on 30 December 2009:
Great post.
Actually, I by mistake left content network on on a campaign that had just exact match - and the CR’s were absolutely amazing. CTR’s weren’t bad, but weren’t phenomenal.
This is just in one niche, and I haven’t tested creating a broad campaign and using just broad keywords.
According to my rep, they are constantly working on the algo’, and while a year ago they were recommending more keywords (like 50) per ad group to help the algorithm match pages, they now recommend around 5 - similar to what @itchy is doing.
As far as @cataclysmic’s comment about the lesser targeted sites not affecting the more targeted sites, I doubt that’s true.
There are quality scores attached to the site, landing page (not sure if this is relevant in content on Google. I know it is on Yahoo.), ad, ad group, campaign and account. So while the CTR may not affect the ad quality for the rest of the sites, I’d have a hard time believing that Google doesn’t predict your’ quality score for new sites based on your’ existing track record.
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