Placement Targeting - The equalizer

[Discovery]

Site Targeting Changes: CPC Bidding and a New Name
AdWords site targeting is now called placement targeting. And we've added CPC bidding, so you can pay for each click or for each thousand impressions on your placement-targeted ad.
CPM is just to easy for advertisers to inflate CPM numbers without any promise of quality.

Ads placed 1500 pixels at the bottom of 1 page article that has been split up into 4 webpages.

The combination of CPC and Placement reports and advertisers have the tools to help balance out the equation.

What do you think, will Placement targeting be the equalizer content advertisers have been waiting for?

What do you think about the name change? Removing site, almost speaks to the fact that it will not only be webSITES that the ads will be running on.

Discovery

[abbottsys]

CPM is just to easy for advertisers to inflate CPM numbers without any promise of quality...
Discovery

I totally agree. I've played with the old CPM site targeting many times and it always flopped. CPC is without a doubt the way to go. I'm glad Google finally recognized that. For me there are only two things to remember when advertising across the vast Google network... text ads rule, and CPC rules.

I've tried everything else on offer, and nothing comes anywhere close to text/CPC.

[Discovery]

It's funny that you say that...I was just thinking, man I have seen offering after offering come out, but nothing has ever exploded past the simple text ad.

Radio - expensive, tough to measure, not right for many services.
Print - Check out the stock prices on the big print publications.
Video - ala YouTube has potential
CPM - Fraud
CPA - Advertisers wont use it

CPC with search and now site targeting has the best balance of incentive and control for advertisers and publishers.

ITV will be a big change in direction and has the ability to dwarf simple CPC text ads.

Discovery

[abbottsys]

...I was just thinking, man I have seen offering after offering come out, but nothing has ever exploded past the simple text ad...
Discovery

Yup, consider the benefits of Text/CPC ads..

1) Costs nothing to produce, just 90 characters of text
2) Easy to distribute, not a bandwidth hog
3) Easy to change, and thus allow fast experimentation
4) Easy to measure, so you can get your ROI
5) Liked by the publishers, which boosts distribution
6) Very democratic, so your ad looks just as good as IBM's ad

And as you say, CPC is the only model that can carefully balance the interests of advertisers and publishers alike.

[Mel66]

Good thread, guys. I agree with all your points. CPM is an uncontrollable nightmare; and text ads rule. The other stuff (radio, print, etc.) is nice to have in the arsenal, but only as add-ons. I think CPC will continue to be the heavy hitter for a while.

Melissa

[jimbeetle]

From the publisher's side, cpm site targeting never really worked for me because one site in particular -- tourist related -- was drawing targeted ads for local dentists, plumbers and such. I didn't worry about it too much 'cause they didn't appear that often and hey, if they want to waste their money, so be it.

Now with CPC I'm really going to have to police this particular site to keep unrelated not likely to be clicked ads off. I'm not giving any of my space away for free.

[abbottsys]

From the publisher's side.... Now with CPC I'm really going to have to police this particular site to keep unrelated not likely to be clicked ads off. I'm not giving any of my space away for free.

Exactly. CPC does require a bit more work, but you'll get more relevent ads.. which makes the advertisers happy because distribution quality is better.. and makes the publishers happy because ads are more likely to be clicked, making their AdSense revenue better.

CPC is the only model that does this. CPM is to far in the publishers favor, and CPA is to far in the advertisers favor.. but CPC is just right :)

[SearchEnginePPC]

Quite agree with the sentiment, but has anyone tried out Placement Targeting on CPC yet?

I did (albeit with a small budget), and the CPC campaigns received hardly any traffic at bids that were equivalent to the CPCs the client was paying on their CPM campaigns. In other words, traffic was unavailable at the same prices, even with the CPM campaigns paused (in case there was a traffic trade-off).

The CPM campaigns are working fairly well, but they take much more work and risk to set up. I just wish I could replace it with CPC campaigns without losing 90% of the traffic.

Anyone else experience something similar?

[Discovery]

SE PPC - Yes, we have been experimenting with it for about a month and you are correct it is not working as we had hoped.

It seems as though Google is not giving equal value to site targeted ads as they do their normal adsense placement ads.

I don’t know how this works, how much influence Google's algo has and how much the control the publisher has. I do know that I can take a site where in normal content campaigns is producing a 22% conversion with a 1.89 CPC, then target that site and watch the conversions drop, placement fall and CPC needing to be adjusted upward to even get a single impression.. up until the point the site is no longer all that attractive.

If were as easy as
Referral report identifies a site with 22% conversion rate
Target site and:
With slightly increased bids Campaign increases to 30% CR
OR a 20% increase in traffic with the same 22% CR
Then this would have been the windfall we were hoping for.


We have once again had to back out of a new G feature. We are no longer using site targeting as a significant part of our campaign's structure.

Discovery