Content Network: Error Page Ads & Domain Ads?

[PPC]

When I run a report in Placement Report in AdWords, I am presented with stats on all the domains that the ads for my content targeted campaigns have appeared on. Two other line-items are in the report as well: "Domain ads" and "Error page ads". Does anyone know exactly what these include? Are domain ads just parked domains?

Also, is it possible to either opt out of these types of ads or bid on these types of ads and not the rest of the content network?

Thanks.

[Discovery]

You got it. Domain page ads are parked domains and I believe the only way out is to opt out of ALL of them via your account rep.

Why there may be multiple line items for domain ads in a one day report is not clear to me. Are these parked domains also being categorized and tallied in some way which is not shown to us? GoDaddy parked pages, Netsol parked pages and so on? Are these parked pages all .com, or at least US based when we have selected US only in our campaigns? We receive a great deal of impressions and clicks from foriegn based websites in content match. Fortuneately we can block many that we find in our daily reports, but what about the domain page ads? These are hidden to us.

Error pages, are pages where there was either some type of corruption with the advertisers page was loaded, but an impression even a click had occured. Basically, G's system was not able to capture who the referrer was due to the error.


Discovery

[abbottsys]

We actually get good results from domain traffic. It's worth noting that many of these parked pages (e.g. those on godaddy) contain search boxes that perform searches on the entire google ad inventory. Since these are clearly keyword driven you have an interesting situation where part of the content network is acting as a huge distributed search network. Perhaps this is the reason we see good results on these domains.

[PPC]

Thanks for the help. We actually also see better results from domain pages and error pages than the rest of the content network.

[abbottsys]

Originally Posted by PPC

Thanks for the help. We actually also see better results from domain pages and error pages than the rest of the content network.

Good to hear. And of course "error pages" are essentially the same as parked domains, because most parked domains handle the 404 (page not found) error by just displaying the home (i.e. parked) page.

[Discovery]

Started getting this in my placement report this past week

search.yahoo.com/search...

Only 12 clicks this month at a mid level CPC... no conversions!

Why and how can Yahoo show up in my placement report for content?

PS: Error's are different according to our Grep. If I remember corretly it is not a 404, it is when an ad is delivered and clicked on, but for some reason the referal data is not transfered to G. Sounds altogether fishy to me and not a click I would want, however this is what we were told.

Discovery

[abbottsys]

Originally Posted by Discovery

....Why and how can Yahoo show up in my placement report for content?.....

Don't know. Unless Yahoo is back-filling their sponsored results with adwords. Not totally out of the question if they have excess distribution capacity and not enough of their own ads to fill it. Hey, google looks under every stone when it comes to finding distribution

[Mel66]

Originally Posted by Discovery

PS: Error's are different according to our Grep. If I remember corretly it is not a 404, it is when an ad is delivered and clicked on, but for some reason the referal data is not transfered to G. Sounds altogether fishy to me and not a click I would want, however this is what we were told.

Actually, this is what my G rep said about error pages:

- All pages that served your ad through our AdSense for Errors program will be categorized as 'Other' in the Placement Performance report. These pages serve users with targeted AdWords ads when they enter a search query in their browser's address bar instead of querying it through a search engine (like Google). Instead of displaying an error page, users will see a page displaying ads and relevant information.

We may not be able to identify the specific URL that displayed your ad through AdSense for errors. This is because the URL or search term users typed into their browser may not be a valid website address. With AdSense for Errors, when a user types a non-functional URL into their browser's address bar with the intent of reaching a website or conducting a search, the user will get redirected to a page with relevant content with or without ads. This improves the user experience because the user will see a page relevant to the content they were looking for instead of seeing an error page.

In these cases, because the domain is not a registered domain or functional website, a URL or domain is not passed back to Google. Instead, we will accumulate and report traffic from these AFE sites under the 'Other' line item in your Placement Performance report.

You can see whether the 'Other' line item is a result of error page ads under the 'Special Category' column in your report. The column will read 'Error page ads' in these cases. To include this column in your report, select the 'Special Category checkbox under 'Attributes' when creating your report from within your account.

HTH

Melissa

[abbottsys]

Mel - very interesting, thanks. Reinforces my point about google looking under every stone for ad distribution opportunities. So, do you think they are back-filling Yahoo Search?

[Mel66]

I have no idea about the Yahoo thing. I was really surprised to see that, to be honest.... I'm going to re-check this week's placement report to see if they showed up in mine.

Maybe Discovery is special, somehow. LOL

Melissa

[abbottsys]

Just checked my placement report - no sign of Yahoo. But domain and error pages are still doing very well for us.

[Discovery]

Ya special,... specially targeted by YSM to run my ads on crappy websites every opportunity that they can for calling them to the canvas so many times. (Yahoo gets a laugh at click fraud report)

Actualy YSM has done well this year so far. Just interesting to see what is coming through on the placement report.

Discovery

[abbottsys]

Originally Posted by Discovery

Ya special,... specially targeted by YSM to run my ads on crappy websites every opportunity that they can for calling them to the canvas so many times. (Yahoo gets a laugh at click fraud report)

Actualy YSM has done well this year so far. Just interesting to see what is coming through on the placement report.

Discovery

It's strange finding Yahoo on your adwords Placement Report. Either Yahoo itself backfilling with adwords ads, or perhaps a Yahoo search partner doing something? Did you try Yahooing a few of your keywords to see if your (adwords) ads show up?