Seperating Google Search & Google Contextual Network

[caugas]

As the landscape get more aggressive, more crowed, and more expensive, I noticed that I had to take extreme measures this holiday season in maximizing my budget spends, ROI, and CTR's.

I have determined that I need to separate my Google Advertising Campaigns - 1 set of campaigns for Google Search and 1 exact duplicate set of campaigns for Google Contextual Network.

The primary reason for this, was to make sure I was getting the best CTR % of my $’s, and my deleting the contextual search feature from my primary campaigns I have increased my CTR from an avg of .78% to 4.25%. This has lead to better rankings and lower overall cost. My question is am I just late in doing this? Is everyone else doing this? Or is this not an industry standard technique? I am glad that I have separated the two campaigns, thoughts?

[Ryan L]

I don't think that content network CTR affects your overall cost equation...if it did no one would try it.

[caugas]

I think it does, for example

Search total Enabled Search newtwork Imp/Clicks/CTR
All sources total = Content newtwork Imp/Clicks/CTR

If you run your Google Search Campaigns in conjucntion with your content campaigns under the same account campaign not seperated you get something like this

Total Impressions - Search Network 1,000 & clicks 100
Total Impressions - Content Network 1,000,000 & clicks 10

You account CTR is some really amazingly low number.. 000.45%

However if you run just the search network your CTR now become hella good... Get it, when you run both in conjuntion with each other your CTR is a combination of search network and content network impressions....

[chris1]

Hey caugus,

Content CTR is not a factor of your terms quality score, nor does it affect your paid search listings at all. In other words, all stats from content listings have no effect on paid search listings and vice-versa, even if you are managing in the same campaign.

That being said, I keep my content and search campaigns seperate for more efficient management. I also have duplicate campaigns for paid search only - one for Google traffic only and one for Google traffic plus Google network (with bids at about 75% of the Google only campaign). I actually used to have another set of duplicate campaigns as well for international traffic (UK and AU) but performance was poor so we dropped it.

[Ryan L]

I have tried turning them on and off...no difference for me on actual CPC... I do separate my bids though.

not sure but I think that the cpc is determined based on quality/CTR on a keyword basis and not on an ad group basis.

also in my acct content network impressions are all grouped at the bottom and not broken out on a per keyword basis.

[caugas]

Oh, my bad I thought the content impressions affected the total impression count... thanks for the advise chris and ryan....
I will keep them seperated....however.. cheers..

[Janvs]

We seperate Search and Content accounts as well. if you need to delete keywords (because the set of keywords in an ad-group determines the theme of the group) you can delete them without worring about Search.

Ads might be different from Search, and so on.

[Discovery]

To dominate you must triangulate!

Keep Campaigns Separate:
Separate content, search AND placement target campaigns:
The higher degree of control you have over each keyword bid, where it is placed and where it leads the visitor to, the more return you will get. (The conundrum is do you have the resources to manage such a set up?)

Placement/Target:
Use site targeting to further increase returns in the content network. You have exclude the same sites in the content campaigns that you will be targeting in the "placement" (formerly site targeting) campaigns.

Exclude:
Sharpen the focus on what sites run your ads as well as how your ads are triggered.
Use site exclusion, Use negative keywords, test keyword matching options, Optimize content on your landing pages to gain the highest Quality score.

These basic elements above should hold steady even as new advertising opportunities become available. However, Google will need to address the issue of not having a clear process nor interface to run truly integrated marketing campaigns with Print, Radio, PPC....ITV/IPTV. In the future I see the advertiser not having to physically break up campaigns into a "folder" like structure as it is today, but instead linking elements within search, content, placement, print, radio, IPTV to identify a campaign. This way campaigns can be created, changed and evaluated all without having to copy paste, push pull, or otherwise restructure your whole set up just to test a new approach.


Discovery