Google’s Content Network – The Good, Bad & The Ugly

The Good: High Quality Contextually Matched Sites

Google’s contextual advertising through AdWords offers advertisers several ways to expand their advertising reach and generate additional qualified leads or increase their sales beyond clicks from Google search results. In fact, when properly implemented, the Content Network can produce quality leads at much lower cost than Google Search because the cost per click (CPC) is generally a lot lower on the Content Network than on Google Search.

Google’s Content Network is a totally different animal from the keyword sponsorship that triggers your ads to appear on Google’s search results, even though both are Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and both are managed through the same AdWords interface. The Content Network is based on Google’s AdSense program, which allows website owners to run AdWords ads on their websites, sharing the click revenue with Google. If you advertise through AdWords and leave the Content Network checkbox in your AdWords campaign settings checked, which it is by default, you are agreeing to pay for clicks on your ads appearing on any website. The total cost of those clicks shows up as Content Network clicks in each AdGroup’s summary page. Your monthly charge for Content Network clicks can be a significant percentage of your total AdWords bill.

Google provides another way, called Site Targeting, to advertise on websites that run ads through AdSense. Site Targeting allows you to hand-pick the individual sites on which you want your ads to appear, but with care and some effort, the Content Network can provide you with a much better return on investment than Site Targeting.

There are two reasons for this. First, the Content Network includes many sites that are not available via Site Targeting.  Second, payment for Site Targeting is based on a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) model rather than a CPC model. The CPM model can quickly run up your AdWords spend since you are paying by the number of times your ads are displayed (impressions) and not just when your ads are clicked. In other words, if your ad is displayed 10,000 times on the Content Network and receives only one click, then you pay only for that one click; on Site Targeting, you will be charged for the 10,000 impressions. This has a bigger impact than you might think, because the ratio of clicks to impressions is typically much lower in contextual advertising than in search-related ads.

According to Google’s information on their website about the Content Network, “The Google content network comprises hundreds of high-quality websites, news pages, and blogs that partner with Google to display targeted AdWords ads.” [http://adwords.google.com/select/afc.html]. Google goes on to explain that your ads on the Content Network will appear on sites that match the theme of your ad and sponsored keywords. Google also states that their extensive search and linguistic processing technology is smart enough to decipher the meaning of virtually any Content Network page, ensuring that your ads will only appear on relevant pages.  For example, if you sell Java software, you don’t have to worry about your ads showing up on pages about coffee.

But just how reliable is this technology? And are all Content Network sites created equal?

The Bad: Irrelevant, Non-contextually Matched Sites

While Google displays your Content Network ads on a number of relevant content pages, many of your ad impressions will likely occur on non-contextually related pages and sites. If you have a good web analytics tool in place and take the trouble to check where your Content Network clicks come from, you can determine just how many clicks your site receives from these non-contextually related sites. Clicks from non-relevant sites bring traffic that tends to convert at a much lower rate than traffic from contextually relevant sites, thus driving up your advertising spend every month and raising your cost per lead or cost per sale.

Naturally you would think that Google’s dominance in the search engine wars, based on their uncanny ability to deliver relevant search results, would enable them to make sure Content Network ads only show up on pages/sites that are contextually relevant to the advertiser’s offer. Unfortunately, our experience shows that non-contextual placements are very common.

The Ugly: Parked Domains & MFA (Made-For-AdSense) Sites

While the Content Network does indeed include “…hundreds of high-quality websites” it also includes literally millions of sites that generate a much higher percentage of low-quality, non-converting and even fraudulent clicks. Unless you apply a fair amount of knowledge and effort, the vast majority of your ads will likely appear on sites that have little or no real, unique content, let alone relevance to the offer in your ads. Such sites include:

• Parked domains. When someone registers a domain name but doesn’t create any content or connect the domain name to an existing site, the domain name is considered parked and the Registrar typically connects that domain name to a site running Pay Per Click ads.  Parked domains include “typo-domains” which are common misspellings of popular registered domain names. These sites often look similar to directories but they lack any substantial content. There are millions of domain names that have been claimed and paid for with the intent of someday building a site or selling the domain name. Most of these domains are running ads, which benefits Google and either the Registrar or the owner of the parked domain financially whenever someone clicks on an ad. Because these domains contain no useful content, the value to the advertiser of clicks from such sites is highly suspect.

• MFA sites. MFA, or Made-for-AdSense, refers to websites or blogs that exist only to generate revenue for their owners using Google AdSense (Google’s program for website owners to allow AdWords ads to run on their sites). The quality of the content on these sites is poor and may be scraped from other sites -- referred to as a “scraper site”. MFA sites often have a very high ratio of advertising to content. Owners of MFA sites have a strong financial incentive to generate clicks on their sites, so some may employ armies of low-paid ad clickers or automated programs known as “click-bots” to increase the number of clicks. Clearly, such clicks represent only cost and no value to advertisers.

As a result of these issues, many savvy AdWords advertisers have given up on the Content Network altogether. It’s easy to do – you simply uncheck the Content Network checkbox in your Campaign Settings. But you should be aware that it is possible to generate high-quality clicks and conversions from the Content Network and in many cases the Content Network can produce lower-cost leads and sales than ads on Search. In fact, some of our clients generate as many as half of their AdWords leads from the Content Network, at roughly half the cost per lead compared to Search. To be successful, you must prevent your ads from appearing on low-quality and contextually un-related sites, at least to the extent possible.

How do you do that? Here’s a checklist:

1. Set up the ads you want to run exclusively in Google’s Content Network in a separate Campaign. This will take some duplication of effort but it’s worth it. Set your bid price much lower than what you would for Google search and select about a dozen keywords that are all tightly themed. Also include some of the keywords that appear in your ad copy as well. The more focused these keywords are, the more likely Google can interpret the themes of your Content Network adgroups.

2. Block the obviously bad or non-converting Content Network sites from showing your ads. The AdWords Site Exclusion Tool allows you to block your ads from appearing on any website you specify. You simply copy & paste a list of sites to block into the Site Exclusion tool, found under Tools. Each site exclusion list applies to one Campaign. How do you decide which sites to block? The “brute force” approach employs a good quality web analytics tool to identify each site that sends you Content Network clicks. You’ll need something more than Google’s free Google Analytics for this. Look at each site. If it’s not a good, content-rich site that’s relevant to your offer, block it. The downside to this approach is that you’ll first have to pay for a click from a site you don’t want before you can block the site. The process can also be very labor intensive.

3. Look at your Placement Performance Report. If you are currently running ads on the AdWords Content Network, you can generate a report that shows content sites that are running your ads. Like a good web analytics tool, The Placement Performance Report can help you identify sites to exclude. Unfortunately, at this time the Placement Performance Report lumps all parked domains together under one entry as “domain ads” so you can’t identify them from this report.

If you are careful and willing to invest the time, the instructions and guidance above can help you gain a significant improvement in the return on your Google AdWords investment through the Content Network.