Articles in The 'content-network' Tag

Use your competitors to get a leg up?

by Taylor Wilson

Get a leg up for your business by establishing a presence with your competitor’s audience. You may as well bid on your competitor’s names and products, because they are bidding on yours. It’s imperative to bid on the names of your industry’s competitors, well known brand names and industry experts so that you can better establish your business and generate awareness (keep all trademark infringements in mind). This is an easy and often cheaper way to find new customers, primarily if you’re not well known or your products don’t have a large fan base. This allows you to piggyback on someone or something that does. 
Zappos, Overstock and Amazon are just a few of many companies who have done tremendously well and have generated a lot of business by bidding on competitor’s products and names.

(Above is an example of several companies that are bidding on Nike’s name)

In addition to utilizing the sponsored ads available through the search engines, you should also use your competitor’s keyword phrases and names in the content network, which can be of a great advantage to you. The content network allows you to display your ads on other websites that may mention your competitors or pertain to your industry. Utilizing image ads in the content network can help you start to associate yourself as a top competitor and a company that someone should look into before engaging with other companies. If your competitors or their competing products are getting a lot of press or coverage, you can capitalize on their coverage. Piggybacking on your competitor’s popularity and following is a great way to find new customers and establish a larger fan base.

Content Targeting vs. Placement Targeting in PPC Campaigns

by Gerard Tollefsen

If you are looking for additional ways to market your brand and increase your visibility online, Content Targeting and Placement Targeting campaigns can be excellent options.  It is important however, to understand the differences between the two channels and align your goals with the strengths of each.

Content Targeting gives you the opportunity to reach a huge audience.  The Google content network has thousands of publishing partners from widely known websites to very small forums and blogs.  Google will automatically deliver your ads to content network sites based on the relevancy of your keywords and ads to the site publisher’s content and themes.  Content Targeting gives you a chance to increase brand awareness and you can expect to receive thousands of impressions per day.  But the Google system is not perfect and this type of campaign must be watched and managed closely.  Google offers a report titled Placement Performance which provides performance data from the content network sites where your ad(s) have been shown.  This report is extremely useful in identifying sites within the network that are not performing to your expectations.  Be proactive in running this report daily and add sites to your “excluded sites” list to optimize your content network campaign.

Placement Targeting allows you to deliver your ads to a much more targeted audience.  Instead of your ads being shown across all the publishing partners who Google determines have relevancy with your ads, you choose the sites from the content network.  Many site publishers within the content network allow both text ads and banner ads.  If you have banner creatives already in place this can be valuable way to test your banner ads against text ads on specific websites.  This type of campaign must also be watched closely.  There are usually only a few available ad positions on these content network sites and if you simply set up the campaign and let it run you may find your ads are not being displayed.  It is important to assign a value to visitors from placement targeting sites.  You may have to bid much more aggressive in order to achieve ad delivery on sites with a lot of competition.

Expand Your Reach With Google’s Content Network

by Sonya Wood

We have all heard this saying or perhaps have said it ourselves in the past couple of months, in this economy. Advertisers are looking for ways to keep their name out there without the expense of advertising.

One such option for advertisers to take advantage of is the Google content network from Google Adwords. Google’s content network is a large network of Google properties, including gmail, websites, news pages, and blogs. Sites such as About.com, TheNewYorkTimes.com, Lycos.com, FoodNetwork.com, just to name a very few, are all part of the network.

Google’s content network reaches 642 million or 75% of worldwide Internet users per month; more than any other property or network. The content network is a great way to expand the reach of your message or brand.

Unlike the search network, where specific keywords and search terms are designated to ads, content network ads are targeted based on user themes.  Getting started is easy. New campaigns are automatically opted into the content network so when creating campaigns, you do not need to do anything to begin advertising there. You can even target your potential customers by actually selecting websites with the most relevant content to your products or services. By running a placement report you can determine which websites are getting the best results and then optimize your campaigns by removing underperforming sites. Google also has the option to bid more for specific sites that perform better by using the placements feature. Other ad formats are accepted, such as image and video ads. The content network also allows for more creativity when it comes to ad copy. Remember that your audience is not actively seeking you, so you need to grab their attention and generate interest and excitement about your products or services.

If branding or attaining maximum traffic is one of your advertising goals, create a content campaign and test it.  With over 700 billion impressions every month, you will see that your reach is dramatically increased. Most advertisers would agree that while Google’s content network has its benefits, it is best to compliment content campaigns with search campaigns.