Adwords Explained - Page 12 - Google search network vs content network

Google Content Network vs Search Network

As mentioned earlier in this paper, the Google Content Network or “Adsense” network is a large group of websites who have elected to present Google Adwords advertisements on their website. Any legitimate website owner can subscribe to become an Adsense advertiser and receive a commission from Google for any clicks on ads which are presented on their website. Once they have signed up, Google will commence delivering ads onto their web page. Google presents these ads based on the text content on the web page in question. So if the web page is all about vacuum cleaners, then ads relating to vacuum cleaners will be displayed on this page. Unlike Search targeted ads, CTR is not a determinant of ad position on these pages (Google don’t provide much detail as to how ad ranking occurs on these pages except that a combination of both the “relevance” of the ad to the content on the page, and the bid price offered seem to be the two primary factors).

In Campaign Settings on Adwords, an advertiser can elect to have their Adwords ads shown on these content partners websites.

These ad impressions can help significantly increase the distribution and reach of an Adwords campaign.

The CTR ratio however may vary considerably from the search part of a campaign, as can the conversion rate and cost/conversion - so an effective strategy may be to separate the Content network ads into their own campaign (ie setup 2 identical campaigns, with the same keywords and advertisements, with one however targeted at the Google Search site and Search network, and the other campaign targeted at the Content network).

This will allow you to perform side by side measurement of conversion rates and the associated ROI / ROAS to ensure that you are focusing your investment in the right place.

In addition to measuring and comparing these results, as can be seen in the screenshot above, Google supports the ability to have separate and varied bids for ads targeted at the content network which can be a useful way to tune the average position of the ads shown.  Again, testing different approaches is important.   If your ads drop below an average position of 3.0 - 3.5 on the content network, the number of impressions available will drop off considerably, as many blocks of ads shown on the content network have only 4 ads in them (so appearing > position 4.0 will relegate your ads to those advertisers showing blocks of 8 which is a much smaller number of publishers).

Other Pay Per Click advertising searches (Yahoo/Overture, MSN etc)

While the specific advice offered in this paper is focused on Google Adwords, many of the general principles (split testing, advertisement content, monitoring frequency) apply well to these other networks. Once you have used Google’s strong monitoring capabilities to refine and hone your keyword advertising strategy, these services can be viewed as a very effective mechanism for further increasing your distribution reach and improving the volume of inquiries reaching your landing pages.

Where you are competing in a competetive industry, smaller players like Yahoo, MSN & Sensis may be a cost effective strategy to pickup website traffic, where Google click prices may be high due to competition.  They are also an effective strategy to extend the reach of a proven positive ROI Adwords campaign.