Over the past few years, when working with clients to improve their pay-per-click campaigns, one of my first pieces of advice was to opt out of the Content Network.

From 2005 to 2007, it seemed the Content Network was just a black hole.   By default, a percentage of your spend was spent in the Content Network. 

Where did that money go?  Some of the traffic showed up in Web reports such as ‘Google Content Syndicated’ or ‘Google Ad Services.’  But, much of the traffic had no referrer information nor any keyword information.

And, if you did create a separate campaign for the Content Network, the traffic almost always proved to be lower quality than search traffic.

Google realized this.  And, back around 2007 … gave you the option to set bids differently for the Content Network than for search.

But, the problem remained. Where was this traffic coming from?  With no referrer nor keyword data, it was impossible to know.

Google realized this was a huge problem to search marketers.  So, while many search marketers were not paying attention … Google listened and made some changes, and the Content Network got good.

Some things you may not know about Google’s Content Network, 2009.

1) Reach – The Content Network reaches 76% of internet users across both mass media and niche media sites.

2) Placement Options – No more is the Content Network the black hole of search marketing.  You can choose where (type of site or specific site) you want your campaign to run.

3) Exclusions – Even better, if a site in the Content Network is not driving quality traffic, you can exclude it from the campaign.

4) Demographics – When you set up a campaign, you can include only the age and gender that you want to target.

5) Reporting – This is my favorite.  The Keyword/Placement report will tell you not only the normal stats for each click including domain but also interesting information about each site. (Parked Domain, Error Page, etc.)

If you are one of the search marketers who opted out of the Content Network a few years ago, it is definitely time to give it a second chance.

Related posts:

1. Google Content Network Enhancements – An Enhancement to Google’s Revenue?
2. Rethinking Your Google Content Targeted Campaigns
3. New Automatic Matching Feature in Google AdWords
4. 5 Bad PPC Symptoms that Usually are NOT Click Fraud
5. Google’s New Quality Score Improvements

Tags: content network, Google, pay per click, search marketing
Posted in Common Sense, PPC | 2 Comments »