It’s Day 4 at SES San Jose and it looks like they saved the best for last. Moderated by Gregg Stewart SVP, Interactive, TMP Directional Marketing, this session looked at Contextual Advertising from two directions: from a publisher’s perspective on how to generate more revenue dollars and also effective tactics for managing contextual campaigns. David Szetela CEO, Clix Marketing shared world class content targeting tips from Advertisers perspective.
Contextual Advertising has traditionally been a poorer performer than the search network But…available click inventory is growing at a faster pace than on Search network and it’s not as competitive.
3 main reasons advertisers lose money on Content Network:
- Ads appear on irrelevant pages and get bad clicks (low conversion rates)
- Ads don’t distract attention from site content
- Search and Content should never exist in the same campaign
Contextual is not like Search:
- Readers are not searching for you
- More banner or print advertising
- The first job or your ad is to distract attention away from the content on the page towards your ad
Key Differences:
- Keywords are not discrete entities. The algorithm looks at the keyword list as a whole and judges which sites would be best for the ad
- No more than 30 to 50 keywords per ad group. After that amount the algorithm stops looking at your keyword
- No match type – they are all treated the same
- Individual keyword bids are irrelevant.
HOT TIP: If properly used, they keywords in a content networks’ ad group should describe the kinds of pages where you want your ads to appear
Keyword list should not be describing your keywords; it should be the words that appear most frequently on the pages that you want them to appear.
Ad Copy Differences:
- Ads need to stand out – Distract – feel free to yell
- Yell don’t whisper (animation works well – have a clear call to action, use declarative statements)
- Be more competitive – e.g. free shipping (you are not trying to sell from Content you’re trying to get them to come to your site)
- Test test test
Quality Score Differences:
- Keyword targeted and placement targeted text: CTR, Ad text, Landing Page
- Keyword targeted non-text: only CTR
- Placement targeted non text: only CTR
- Best bidding strategy start high, go low (Buy CTR, then diminish over time)
Google Report is essential
- Google placement performance report – shows which sites and pages your ads are showing on + data. See sites your ads are performing poorly and then use the Site Exclusion Tool to exclude the sites.
- Show performance (clicks, CTR, Etc)
Cynthia Tillo, Senior Product Manager of Advertising Services, Adobe Systems Discusses a Huge new development – Ads for Adobe PDF
PDF Documents – are an exciting new place to advertise. Consider highly trafficked content like Government forms where conceivably we could potentially advertise in the future.
There are over 256 million PDF’s on search. This is a great way for advertisers to reach a difference audience.
Service was launched in Beta In February and is powered in partnership with Yahoo.
This is a way for publishers to increase revenue off their inventory. It’s contextual – adobe’s algorithm is able to determine what the PDF is about. And then with the Yahoo Ad network can get good results in terms of Ad Relevance.
Key Points to these PDF Ads:
- Ads are dynamically matched ads. Every time someone opens the PDF a new ad will be shown. This means that Geo Targeting, Day Parting, Etc can be applied to these ads.
- Has Viral potential – if you download and send the PDF to a friend then the ads will stay and generate revenue.
- Also are letting publishers embed ad content within my content with placeholders:
- Can put anywhere you want in the PDF.
- Can change the look and feel of the Ad.
Current Opportunities to Show ads in PDF
- Magazines or newspapers are producing Digital Versions in PDF
- E-Book versions in PDF – people want some content for free. PDF allows them to provide a chapter as a teaser.
- Digests and Compilations
- Archives Market. Some publishers are sitting on 100 years of content – they are scanning old content and putting it online in PDF form.
Jennifer Slegg, Owner, JenSense.com – from Publishers Perspective
There is a way to monetise just about every kind of content on the web.
When you should NOT monetise with contextual adverting?
- When you are a business site selling products – why send your traffic elsewhere?
- Business site selling services – as an accountant why would you advertise other accountants?
ARE you leaving money on the table?
- Why did you choose the ad networks? (Ad Sense isn’t the only game in town)
- Whey did you put the ad where you did? (a well placed ad can earn a lot more money than a poorly place ad)
- Why did you choose the color scheme?
- Did you consider user experience? Don’t just put your ads front and centre and make users search for the content that they came for.
Beyond AdSense
- Image/ graphical ads
- Video ads
- Affiliate ads
- Cost per action
- Cost per thousand
- AdSense for search / Mobile / Feeds if you have a Blog
- Other contextual companies
Testing AdSense – cheat sheet for what to test:
- Placement
- Proximity
- Size selection
- Ad unit colors and boarders
- Keywords
- URL filters
- GeoTargeting
Other Points to Consider:
- Are you using the most profitable ad unit sizes?
- Are you filtering out your revenue? Be aware that your ad blocking filter list will cost you revenue. (you should only be filtering out competitors)
- Ad Heaviness turns off users. Don’t’ select three identical ads for the same page.
- Don’t select Ads just because they pay more CPA – Carefully select any cost per action
- Always do A/B Testing – layout, color, sizes, styles, etc it can make a HUGE difference. Just because something worked well on one site doesn’t mean that it’s going to work well on another site.
“As for editorial content that’s the stuff you separate Ads with” Roy Thompson, Lord Thompson of Fleet
Jennifer Osborne is VP of Business Development for Search Engine People a Toronto SEO Company.
