Objective: Learn how placement targeting works on ad campaigns.

Placement targeting is an alternative to traditional AdWords keyword targeting, but it can also be combined with keyword targeting to allow for a more refined reach to your selected audience. Placement targeting lets advertisers choose individual websites in the Google content network, or specific sections of those sites, where they'd like their ads to appear. Placement targeting gives advertisers the ability to:

• Advertise on a favorite site or sites
• Reach customers early in the advertising cycle, with ads designed to increase awareness or to promote a brand
• Bid using either cost-per-click (CPC) pricing or using an alternate cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) pricing model. (See Pricing and Ranking below for details.)
• Combine with keyword targeting to define specific content sites where ads with keyword targeting should be shown, and allows for more effective bidding when a keyword match is found on a targeted site. (See the Keywords and Placements Together lesson for more information).

Creating a campaign with placements only is often a good choice for advertisers who want to promote a brand or a new product to a specific audience. With placements, you can select the exact sites where you want your ads to appear.

Mixing placements with keywords in the same ad group is also a good way to refine content network campaigns. Your keywords determine where on the content network your ads can appear, and your placements can be used to raise your bid for certain placements, or to limit your ads to appearing only on the placements you choose, and only when pages on those placements match your keywords.

If you're not sure if placement targeting is for you, you can create separate campaigns with placements only, or create separate ad groups mixing placements with keywords. Then track your results to see what works best for you.

Learn more about how keywords and placements work together.

Campaigns using placement targeting can include text ads and rich ad formats (like image and video ads), and they maintain the same look and feel as standard ads using keyword targeting alone.