PPC Advertising on the Google Content Network

I have been heavily experimenting with advertising on the Google Content Network via Google Adwords. The content network is a different beast and different rules apply. Here are some of the issues I ran into and how to avoid them.

 

-          Be extremely (!) detailed setting up your landing pages, redirects, and ads (you’ll see reason why shortly)

-          Have tracking in place because content network campaigns will not show in Google which keyword triggered the click. You have to catch it when the visitor arrives

-          Think through your ads upfront and optimize before uploading.

-          Never modify an existing ad. Rather create a new ad and pause the other one.

-          Do not add new keywords to an ad group. Always create a new ad group

-          Use only 50 keywords max per ad group. Google will ignore anything past the 50 marker

-          Do not pause a campaign to make adjustments and then re-enable it. Rather change the bid values to a lower price so that the impressions stop automatically  and raise the bid price to show your ads again.

-          Have more than one Adwords account ready. If you ‘toasted’ your campaign with one of the steps above, delete the campaign and upload the correct version into your next account to get a fresh start.

-          Use PHP includes on your landing pages to modify the content without modifying the time stamp on the landing pages itself. This will help to reduce the risk of a “review” pause = lower or no impressions.

 

What the QS slaps are in search campaigns are unvoluntarily paused (awaiting review from the adwords team) campaigns on the content network. Often when a campaign has been “damaged” by not following those rules above, you are either dead in the water or need to move the campaign to a new Google account. Don’t worry too much about Quality Score on the content network – it does exist, but is less enforced compared to the search network. Still, make sure you provide a good user experience and you should do fine. Also adjust your bid prices to meet the different requirements of the content network. No impressions? Check the rules above again.