Placement Targeting - Thumbs Up or Down?

[szetela]

Google's Placement Targeting (formerly called Site Targeting) option for content advertising gained wider use when Google allowed the option of paying on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. I've heard (and experienced) mixed results - what has your experience been? What seems to work best? What factors limit success?

[Mel66]

Is there a "thumbs sideways" option? We had good results with it at MagazineLine, but traffic was low. I was told by our Adwords rep that content targeting campaign CPCs have to "beat out" all other CPCs in the regular content network in order to have the ads appear. So, CPCs have to be set very high. Also, I believe publishers can block ads by certain advertisers and/or opt out of content targeting entirely, so the list of sites to target is (or was, anyway) very small.

I love the concept and think it can be a huge win for both advertisers and publishers, but there needs to be way more to choose from and way more traffic in order for it to be a viable option for most advertisers to bother with.

[szetela]

Mel - at Clix we've also had mixed results from Placement Targeted campaigns. But just to be clear: publisher's can't opt out of such campaigns - they have no way of distinguishing such ads from those coming from plain-vanilla Content campaigns.

One huge tip: the tools Google supplies for identifying publisher sites don't work well - they routinely miss many sites that are eligible for displaying ads.

Try this: use the Placement Targeting tool to find publisher sites based on a keyword - e.g. "civil war."

Then do a Google search on the same term. Copy and paste all the sites you find into the Placement Targeted tool that lets you specify domain names.

Betcha the tool will report that a heft percentage are publishers that accepts ads - and weren't reported when you used the tool to search on "civil war."

All: try it and post your results here.

[szetela]

Folks - my SEW column on Placement Targeted campaigns is here.

I'd love your feedback and the results of your tests.

[jeallen1055]

I consult for several companies and I had very poor results overall. One exception, I have one placement site that really performs well for a discount shopping site – and I have really tried to find sites with a similar audience to work with, but to no avail. I have another customer in the plastics manufacturing space and I while I have scoured his content ad reports for sites that convert, I am just not finding any winners.
John

[Lars]

Is there a "thumbs sideways" option? We had good results with it at MagazineLine, but traffic was low. I was told by our Adwords rep that content targeting campaign CPCs have to "beat out" all other CPCs in the regular content network in order to have the ads appear. So, CPCs have to be set very high.

This is not correct. Placement targeting campaigns only have to "beat out" all other campaigns if you book a CPM campaign because in that case a so-called "expanded text ad" will be displayed. The same is obviously true for image ads.

CPC placement targeting campaigns do compete with other CPC ads but don't have to beat all of them.

[szetela]

Good point, Lars - thanks.

[Mel66]

Originally Posted by Lars

CPC placement targeting campaigns do compete with other CPC ads but don't have to beat all of them.

That may be, but our Adwords rep told us otherwise. It seemed consistent with the results we were seeing, too - our ads weren't showing at a moderate CPC, but when we raised the CPCs dramatically, we started getting traffic.

I don't know what the "right" answer is - I just know what we saw in our campaign!

[SearchEnginePPC]

I've also had mixed results with my various clients.

One B2C financial services company just doesn't get the traffic we'd like to see in their niche marketplace.

Another B2B company gets fantastic results from Placement campaigns, but, then, they also work well on the Content network. Many of their ads have found placements as "expanded text ads" and do great on a CPM basis. CPC bidding hasn't worked as well for us.

Just a tip, though. If you have an agency representative at Google, you can ask them to pull together a sheet for you that lists average CPM and CPC bids for 30%, 60%, and 90% visibility on individual sites in the Placement network. Then if you weigh in your Quality Score, you should be able to get a good idea of the CPM or CPC you'll need to get your ad listed on a particular site.

[szetela]

@SearchEnginePPC - that's a good point about agency reps - they can be very helpful with Placement and Content data.

I also want to remind folks that Placement and Content results are often not the fault of the media, but of the ads - that need to work harder as outlined in my column here and here.

Also, just unraveled the mystery described in last week's column: the Placement Tool definitely has problems that Google's working on. For now, if you identify sites that carry Adsense ads but are rejected by the Placement Tool, just use the "Edit Placements and Bids" capability under the Placements tab. In repeated test we conducted, almost all the sites that the Placement Tool had rejected were accepted.

[justshelley]

One of my biggest challenges with placement targeting is managing bids and Google is aware of these challenges and promises to make changes soon in the admin and in AdWords Editor.

I don't bid across entire AdGroups. I bid by placement. Some placements hit a sweet spot at a certain bid where the impressions, clicks and conversions are just right. The problem with the current set up is that I have to go into edit placements and bids and change them individually or copy them into excel, do a find and replace then paste them back into edit placements and bids.

It usually takes me at least a week or sometimes a couple of weeks of updating individual placement bids daily to get my individual placement bids where I want them.

[SearchEnginePPC]

@ justshelley - I definitely agree that those changes need to be made. The inability to edit individual placement bids within the AdWords system is a real bummer. Editor does work for this much easier, though, so that's some relief. However, Editor doesn't work with CPC based Placement campaigns, leaving a big gap in bidding strategy.

[jin]

I've had mixed results for placement/site targeting depending on the sites (and the product/client/ad of course). I've found a few sites that actually convert - usually the smaller, local sites. Most just offer additional exposure for the clients, and that's how I set expectations, so any conversion is a miracle.

[esseffsem]

We've been trying to get image ads to show on google to know avail.

We have tried both keyword campaigns on the content network with cpc bids, and placement oriented campaigns on specific sites with CPM bids.

No matter what the budget or how high I put the bid our image ads will not show, only the text ads. I have even tried pausing the text ads, but the image ads don't show.

What am I missing here ?

What combination of bid types, campaign types do I need to try
to get the image ads to show ?

Here are the combinations I have tried.

Campaign Bid Ad Network
Keyword CPC Image Content
Keyword CPC Text Content
Placement CPM Image Specific Sites
Placement CPM Text Specific Sites

I haven't tried this combination yet.

Campaign Bid Ad Network
Placement CPC Image Specific Sites
Placement CPC Text Specific Sites

[Janvs]

Experience is good! Very different approach from Search campaigns. Where in KW-campaigns the keyword is the basis, i would say the site is the basis for content, you can have optimized ad-groups, if the site is not converting, you're "stuck".