AdSense for Advertisers

Placing AdWords ads on non-Google sites

Most people thinking about AdSense will be thinking about how to maximise AdSense profits but there would be no AdSense profits and revenues without content targeted AdWords paid for by advertisers. This article is for advertisers.

So why should you, as an AdWords advertiser, choose to have your ads displayed on third party sites?

Does it make sense?

Will they deliver a good return on investment?

In general the answer is yes because your ads will almost certainly only appear on related sites. Better still, some of these sites may be run by your competitors if they are not careful so your business could get exposure on their site - although you will pay them a small amount for the privilege of getting the sales lead. But this is sweetened by the fact that you get the lead - and they lose it.

How's that for gorilla marketing!

And you never pay unless you get the click thru.

Sure, your competitors can stop your ads displaying as part of their AdSense set up process but they will often forget to do this.

AdSense impressions don't count

The other benefit of AdSense is that impressions do not count towards your overall click thru statistics when Google assesses the relevance of your ad. If your ad doesn't achieve a click through rate of about 0.5% or over your ad is at risk of being disabled from appearing on Google's own search results pages.

With AdSense this is not true: your click thru rates do not effect the ranking that Google applies to your ads at all so you could continue to get the minor benefit of having your ads displayed thousands or even tens of thousands of times for zero charge on third party sites without risking an adverse impact on your overall ranking. This is surely better than not having that exposure at all.

Here are some statistics from one AdWords campaign run by a new US client of mine who uses content targeting:

Note that the Click Thru Rate for the content targeted ads is a low 0.1% but the ads are still running.

Now here's the good news: this client's ads have been viewed over 407,000 times by people who are interested in what they do - for nothing. They also got 723 hot leads for $47.15. Don't forget too that some people, when they see an ad repeatedly, just type in the URL in their browser to check out the site, and that costs you nothing.

Repeatedly getting your name about is called "brand building" and it's what big brands pay to do all the time - they advertise all over the place just to keep their brand in the public domain, "front of mind" as they say. And they spend big bucks doing so - but you can do it for free with AdSense and what's more, your ads will go in front of people known to be interested in your products because that's what AdSense does. You get targeted, free advertising.

Keyword bidding and content targeted ads

How much should you bid for content targeted keywords?

One factor lies in your favor here: many people turn off content targeting which means your ads are competing in a smaller field of advertisers which will lower prices.

Two factors, however, are against you:

1. you won't necessarily be able to define your field so tightly because you are relying on Google's own assessment of what third party sites are about when it chooses which ads to display.
   

2. even with the recent changes in the AdSense program, only 5 ads max are displayed at any one time on third party sites so if you would naturally qualify for the 6th slot, you won't make it very often.

How to get the best value from AdSense ads.

There is one trick you can use to exploit content targeted ads to the full: design two sets of ads within two campaigns

1. A set of ads in one campaign specifically for content targeting (AdSense) display
   

2. A set of ads in a second campaign specifically for display on Google's own pages.

Now set up these campaigns so that the first set ONLY show on content targeted pages and the second set so that they only show on Google's own pages.

Finally adjust the design of the content targeting ads so that they appeal to viewers of the sites where you think your ads might be posted. (To find these, just enter your chosen keywords into Google and click through the normal search results until you find sites that host AdSense ads.)

How to increase content targeted click thrus.

There is an art to this but if you consider that content targeted ads are viewed more passively than searched for ads where the searcher is actively on the look out for information, you may find that content targeted ads will benefit from more direct encouragement to click thru. For example, offering free samples, trials, downloads etc. will probably boost your enquiry rate. Also you could use more powerful action phrases such as

"Get the facts…"

"Find out more now" etc.

Whilst these types of ads also work well on Google's own search pages, you may find that you get too many time-wasting clicks if you make your ad too strong. Indeed, in many cases, you may specifically wish to put a price in your ad somewhere to discourage free-loaders.

There is no hard and fast guaranteed-to-work technique that you can apply here but if you need as many clicks as you can get, go for content-targeting and set up your campaign so that you can run a specific style of ad on those content targeted pages.

Building your brand - for free

Alternatively, if you are not expecting clicks and just want to use AdSense to maximise your brand awareness, try running very short highly branded ads - here's an example. (which Google might disapprove after a while on grounds of repetition.)

This ad doesn't encourage click thrus much but the phrase "Facts About AdSense" is plastered all over it: when you've seen it 407,000 times you'll probably remember it too!

AdSense risks for the advertisers

The only real risk is being seen to be advertising on a poor quality site and most people will be unaffected by this except in extreme circumstances such as finding your ad on an adult site when you don't want to. Google's own search technology will make this incredibly unlikely - unless you are advertising adult goods that is.