Launching a campaign on the Google Content Network gives you opportunity to reach another very targeted audience; often in a very different consideration phase than users on the search network. In competitive verticals like insurance, travel or finance, CPCs on the search network are high and it’s difficult or costly to remain visible.  The Content Network is a great tool to build brand awareness targeting users with both Image and Text ads, extending your business’ message in a manner not possible through the search network. More impressions on the ever expanding content network, means competition and cost are often lower than other online channels. Using the Google Content Network to compliment other online marketing efforts can help lower overall costs and maximise business exposure.

Introducing the Contextual Targeting Tool

The Contextual Targeting Tool, can help build tightly themed keyword lists for campaigns to run on the Google Content Network. When you enter words or phrases in the Contextual Targeting Tool, the tool suggests a set of keywords related to your terms, and groups them into themed ad groups. Currently the tool is only available to a limited number of advertisers and agencies, however, data can be accessed though your Google account manager. Hopefully we will see this available to all in early 2011.

Content Campaign – Planning and Setup

Content Network campaigns should always be kept separate from Search Network campaigns. Here are some things to consider when setting up your new Google Content campaign:

- Set a daily budget. Make sure this is set conservatively in the beginning, then increase over time. There are a huge number of impressions available daily on the content network, so it’s easy to spend a lot in a very short time.

- Try different ad formats to see what works best for your business. Depending on your business’ objectives and available budget, there is a lot of choice. See all ad formats: https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/adwords/select/afc/ads.html

- Make ads catchy and interesting. Remember, users are not searching for your products as with Search. So your ads need to stand out. Compelling, attractive and well-written ads will capture a users interest and provide a valuable experience.

- For local products, offerings or location specific services, consider geo-targeting. It’s applied in the same way as it is on the Google Search Network.

Content Network – Keyword Themes

Start by creating keyword themes.  Identify keyword themes you would like to target; this will be the basis of your content ad group. Here’s an example of how a theme of keywords for a content ad group could be set-up

Content Ad Group Theme: Travel Insurance

Keywords: cheap travel insurance Australia, vacation insurance, compare travel insurance Australia, travel cover, travel insurance, travel insurance Australia, travelinsurance, annual travel insurance, holiday, Australia

Identify keywords that are likely to be mentioned on a website when a user is reading about “Travel Insurance.” Google recommends that each ad group use 10 to 20 keywords in any given Ad Group. Don’t try fit too keywords into each group, just create another ad group, even if it seems too similar. To help discover and build keyword themes, use the contextual targeting tool, if this is not available to you within AdWords, other great resources including: Google’s Wonder Wheel and other search engine that use clustered search results.

Displaying the Right Ads

The quality of advertisers ads is extremely important on the Content Network. The objective when advertising on the content network is to effectively capture and engage users who are not actively searching for your product. Therefore, the message must be clear and should help pre-qualify users. An ambiguous or misleading message will result in a poor brand experience and will waste your money.

Setting Bids

There are a number options when bidding on the Google content network. The two most common are CPC and CPM but CPA bidding is also available. This can be set under campaign settings tab > Bidding & Budget. CPA bidding will only be available once your new campaign has history including a significant number of conversions recorded.

As a general rule, start conservatively with your CPC and CPM bids. You can increase them over time if you are not getting enough clicks / impressions. For CPA bidding, be generous in the beginning. Take the CPA from Search Campaigns and add 25% to it. This will be a good starting point. As the system achieves your goals, you can lower the CPA target to increase profitability

Optimising your Content Campaigns

Excluding / Managing Sites

A Placement Performance Report will give insight into all performance metrics of websites where ads were displayed in a Content Campaign. Usually ads wont appear on a site for long if no clicks are recorded, so the best way to measure the success of a campaign is through conversions. When viewing placements select the sites to manage. Exclude by checking the radio button next to the URL then click “Manage Placement and Bid” or “Exclude Placements”.

Negative Keywords
These work in the same way in a Content Campaign as in a Search Campaign. They help disqualify any sites mentioning those words to make sure your ads are highly relevant to the sites they appear on.

Content Success

In anticipation of Google releasing the The Contextual Targeting Tool, any of these tips can be applied to improve existing campaigns or used as a guide when setting up a new content network campaign.  As with setting up a Search Campaign, the AdWords user interface will guide users through the basic campaign setup process. Google tools mentioned above give more insight and better understanding of the performance of Text and Image based ads across the Google Content Network. AdWords advertisers continue make the mistake of assuming that Google’s Search Network is the same as Google’s content network. Separate content and search campaigns and enjoy the results of a successful content campaign.

Often, little thought is put into the initial structure of an SEM campaign. Needless to say, we don’t build a house without the help of plans and an architect. The same should apply for Paid Search Accounts. Google and Yahoo! are here to make money. They aren’t going to come knocking like the local building inspector when you haven’t planned.

A strong, well planned account structure is key to the success of any paid search campaign. A solid account structure will make it easy to expand and identify new trends within your industry, to apply budgets appropriately and assist you to take full advantage of search engine tools that reward well structured accounts.

5 Must Do’s for Paid Search Account Structure

1. Utilise match types

Google: Broad | Phrase | Exact

Yahoo: Standard | Advanced

Broad match (aka:Advanced match at Yahoo!) is generally over-used, and other match types generally over-looked. Best practice would suggest to use: phrase and exact (standard) match for words you know work and utilise broad match to discover new ones.

2. Start small

Starting out? Don’t feel like you need to think of every possible keyword variation, campaign or the best ad. This will happen over time. It’s best to start small, evaluate performance and build from there.

For established Search Accounts; don’t be afraid to pause / delete. If something is under-performing, pause it and use that money to test some other keywords variations or maybe increase the budget and visibility of other campaigns that have performed well.

3. Create themes.

Themes should be focused around your text ad. if the keywords in an ad group don’t directly relate to an ad. Create another ad group. Themes can be categorised many ways – brand, type of product, size, high / low volume words. Always remember that the purpose of creating these themes is to maximise performance. The main focus of creating themes is so the best performing campaigns always have budget available to them. Other groups are for discovery, used to continually optimise and improve your SEM performance.

4. Keep ads & keyword groups relevant.

Generally speaking, more ad groups with fewer keywords are easier to manage. It also makes the task of removing poorly performing keywords a cinch. Ads should always be clear and relate directly to the search query. Highly relevant ads will increase the chances of a higher CTR% and better quality score. Use tools like dynamic keyword insertion and negative match to eliminate any irrelevant matches and make your ads highly relevant to visitors who search using long-tail keyword phrases.

5. Keep brand related keywords separate

Always have a separate campaign for brand related words. Brand words should be visible 100% of the time. Visibility is often limited budget and if brand words are competing with other more expensive terms. Always separate brand words from broader, more generic terms.

Why these SEM tips really work.

We all know search engines reward relevancy, in the form of lower CPCs and higher ad rank. A good SEM account structure ensures you tick all the boxes and if done right will mean everything is rightly relevant. A clear structure will allow you to measure apples to apples and help identify whats working. Invest the time in a good SEM account structure, this will keep you ahead of your competition, have you paying less and hopefully growing your profits!

Add some structure to your life

Often, little thought is put into the initial structure of an SEM campaign. Needless to say, we don’t build house without the help of plans or an architect. The same should apply for paid search accounts. Google and Yahoo are there to make money. They’re not going to come knocking like the local building inspector when you haven’t planned.

A strong, well planned account structure is key to the success of any paid search campaign. A solid account structure will make it easy to expand and identify new trends within your industry, apply budgets appropriately and assist you to take full advantage of search engine tools that reward well structured accounts.

5 Must Do’s for Paid Search Account Structure

1.Utilise match types

Google: Broad | Phrase | Exact | Negative Yahoo: Standard | Advanced | Negative

Broad match (advanced) is generally overused, and other match types generally overlooked. Best practice would suggest to use phrase and exact (standard) match for words you know work and utilise broad match to discover new ones.

2 Start small

Starting out? Don’t feel like you need to think of every possible keyword variation, this will happen over time. It’s best to start small, evaluate performance and build from there.
Established Search Accounts. Don’t be afraid to pause and delete. Use that money to test or increase the budgets on campaigns that do perform.

3.Create themes.

Themes should be focused around your text ad. If the keywords in an ad group don’t directly relate to an ad create another ad group. Themes can be categorised many ways – brand, type of product, size, high/low volume words. Always remember that the purpose of creating these themes is to maximise performance.

4.Keep ads & keyword groups relevant.

Generally speaking, more ad groups with fewer keywords are easier to manage. It also makes the task of removing poorly performing keywords a cinch. Ads should always be clear and relate directly to the search query. Highly relevant ads will increase the chances of a higher CTR%.

5. Keep your brand related keywords separate

Always have a separate campaign for brand related words. Brand keywords should be visible 100% of the time. Visibility is often limited by budget especially if brand words are competing against other more expensive terms. Always separate brand words from broader, more generic terms.

Why these tips really work.

We all know the search engines reward relevancy, in the form of lower CPCs and higher ad rank. A good SEM account structure ensures you tick all the boxes and if done right will mean everything is rightly relevant. A clear structure will allow you to measure apples to apples and help identify what’s working. Invest time into a good SEM account structure and you will see the rewards.

A recent addition to the YSM! Reporting emporium, known as the Ad Delivery Report, is a step in the right direction for Yahoo and in the interest of its advertisers. The report is aimed at giving advertisers the feeling they have more control over where the money they allocate to the Yahoo network is spent.

The new Yahoo Ad Delivery Report does have some great features. The most obvious is that your current YSM accounts could benefit from higher ROI and cost savings, through optimisation using this report. More exciting though is the potential growth of this tool into something much bigger, which could encourage other search engines to follow suit.

How useful is the data offered in the new Yahoo Ad Delivery Report?

The new report is aimed at giving users more transparency, into the performance of the traffic they receive from Yahoo. Although the report works as advertised, it lacks the punch Yahoo so desperately needs.

For instance, we would have loved for the Ad Delivery Report to provide information on domains at the campaign, ad group and even keyword level. With this additional information in hand, advertisers would likely block more, less targeted domains at the campaign level, and improve the ROI of their campaigns.

(The Google content network already uses this functionality to track the performance of each domain at the campaign and ad group level.)

Yahoo Network Distribution

Yahoo has released a new network distribution tool. This feature is more of a blanket, high level approach to domain blocking. Using this distribution tool, Yahoo advertisers can actively select whether they want to appear in Yahoo’s premium network (yahoo.com and bing.com) or on the standard network (similar to the Google partner network).

Yahoo advertisers can choose to appear in the standard network only and be excluded from the premium search engine pages. As shown below in the network distribution diagram taken from a Yahoo! search marketing account.

Know your Traffic Volumes before Making Changes

The best feature of this tool is that it shows the advertiser campaign metrics, specific to the individual distribution channels. Advertisers can instantly see what traffic would be eliminated, before requesting the change.

To make a more informed decision before opting out of either channel, advertisers can use the Ad Delivery Report to access more detailed metrics including revenue and conversion data for each channel.

Good, but could be Better!

It’s unfortunate that Yahoo has rolled out another half baked attempt at improving the user experience for its advertisers. While these new tools do offer some benefit, it is hard to compare them to other tools like Google’s Search Query Report which offers a whole lot more and allows advertisers to truly improve their paid search campaigns through optimisation with targeted, accurate information.

Improvements to some of the new and existing features at Yahoo could be really boost advertiser confidence and give Yahoo a competitive edge that other search engines would need to follow.

When Yahoo! deems a collection of highly searched queries to be closely related the Yahoo system is told to consider the related keyword at the same word or phrase. These are usually synonyms of words within a phrase but also includes plurals and misspellings.

Yahoo! match driver is designed to match certain keywords; regardless of match type, (standard or advanced).

Here is an example of a list of search queries:

Low Cost Flights
Cheap Flights
Discount Flights

If the three keywords above were matched together in the Yahoo! system, regardless of which keyword phase a user searched, the keyword with the highest bid in your YSM! account would be triggered and display the associated ad.

Why is Match Driver good for Yahoo?

In short – Yahoo makes more money from Match Driver. An advertiser with a relativly tight, well structed account, can in fact be matched to a number of other “relevant” keyword variations. This of course inflates the number of actual searches, keywords in the account would attract.

Why is this Match Driver frustrating for Advertisers?

You have no control over certain keywords. Usually the keywords matched have a high search volume and therefore have a high CPC and are very competitive.

It’s very hard to write relevant ads, improve your CTR% and lower your CPC.

It’s difficult to save money by investing time in campaign optimisation and improving quality score because most longtail variations, plurals and synonyms are considered the same.

Standard or advanced match cannot help because again, the system sees the matched keywords, as a single word or phrase.

How do I make the most of Match Driver?

Use the keyword insertion too when writing ads. {KEYWORD:_______}

Keyword insertion will help to introduce the actual search query into your ad, improve its relevancy AND hopefully improve your CTR%.

Request matched keywords are removed from the match driver system. (Plurals or misspellings cannot be removed) Contact your Yahoo account manager and ask that the offending keywords be re-viewed and removed. This process is carried our periodically, so it’s worth submitting your request to Yahoo!

Other Yahoo Search Marketing Keyword Matching “Features”.

Noise Words – The Yahoo! system removes “noise words” these are words like: to, and, it, a, etc, etc.
eg: Cheap Hotel in Venice would be the same as Cheap Hotel Venice.

Re-ordering – at Yahoo! keyword are re-ordered A – Z. This means a keyword like: cheap flights from Sydney to Melbourne would be seen by YSM! As Cheap Flight Melbourne Sydney. Suddenly your Ad title: Cheap Flights from Melbourne to Sydney makes you look like your have had far too much of a good time at lunch before you posted your new ads.

To summarise, there is not much we, as advertisers, can do. Yahoo! is not going to re-invent their system overnight. Be smart and use this information to update and improve your online campaign and create the best work-around for your situation.