Google AdWords Advertising may appear on either the Search Network or the Content Network… or both. Many advertisers either automatically turn off the Content Network, or do essentially the same advertising on both Search and Content. Neither strategy is anywhere close to optimal.

Definition

The Content Network is the collection of websites around the world that display Google Adsense ads. So it’s very important to understand that visitors to these websites may or may not have done a search to reach the website… and most likely did NOT search for your particular target keywords.

So this leads many advertisers thinking that the Content Network is less valuable, or not valuable at all. This might be correct if you simply let Google decide where your ads will appear, but this is definitely not the best use of the Content Network.

Google provides the option of targeting specific web pages, rather than entire websites, for your ads – and this is exactly what MUST be done for successfully using the Content Network.

In this way, you can advertise only on those pages within a website which pertain EXACTLY to your ad… and keeps your ad off pages that are not relevant.

Now some AdWords Advertising experts have special tools to make the arduous task of finding these web pages much easier. The alternative would entail doing searches on Google, Yahoo and MSN for the top sites for each of your relevant keywords and copying down each web page URL. It would also be a good idea to actually visit each web page result to ensure the ads are placed well on the page.

Another very important point is this: Google allows both cost per click and cost per impression advertising models on the Content Network… and it will usually be more beneficial to use cost per impression for two reasons:

1. This will usually result in a lower cost if you create good ads, with good click through rates, and

2. Google will display only one ad per ad block on the page if an advertiser is using cost per impression, which can dramatically improve your click through rates.

Is this all there is to AdWords Advertising, or proper use of the Content Network?

By: Daniel M Falk

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