Lessons Catalog

Lesson 3a: Search and Contextual Targeting

For contextual targeting, AdWords looks at the themes of the keywords in an ad group to decide whether to show your ad for relevant content. If one of your keyword themes matches the theme of the content, your ad might be shown. For search targeting, however, your ad can appear based on the keywords you've chosen and how they match the search term a user enters.

Since keywords are analyzed differently, it's best to create two separate campaigns - one geared to search and one geared to content. This allows you to structure each campaign with different objectives in mind.

Here's a summary of some of the key differences between search targeting and contextual targeting. Remember these concepts when building your campaigns.

*Note: CPM bidding is available only for campaigns that don't target the search network. Campaigns that target the search network must use CPC bidding.

Campaign strategy: As discussed previously, create a separate campaign when targeting the content network. To do this, create a new campaign in your account, starting with keywords. Then go to your Edit Campaign Settings page, and find the 'Networks and bidding' section. Choose 'The content network' and 'Relevant pages across the entire network.'

As always, make sure that your budget is set to a price you can afford and that you only target locations and languages to which your services relate.

Ad group strategy: Create at least three ad groups, each around a common theme. The idea is to bring additional traffic to your site by covering the entire market for which your products or services relate. For example, create one ad group around the exact product or service you're offering; a second ad group around similar products or services; and a third ad group around your audience demographics.

Next, create a keyword list that fits the theme of each ad group. It's useful to include both general and specific keywords.

Finally, create multiple ads for each ad group. Try intermingling different ad formats, like text ads with image ads. To keep everything related, choose the same destination URL for every ad in a particular ad group.

Here's an example of how a pet supplier might organize its account with the goal in mind to sell more dog supplies.

• Create separate campaigns for contextually-targeted ads and search-targeted ads.
• Set your bids at the ad group level.
• Base each ad group around a single theme.
• Test different ad formats (text, image, video).
• Point all ads in a particular ad group to the same destination URL. The more specific the landing page, the better.
• Create short keyword lists.
• Use negative keywords.
• Write compelling, specific ads. (See Writing Targeted Ads.)
• Use placement targeting to raise your bid for websites or other placements where you particularly want your ad to appear. Or, use placements to lower your bid for websites where you know your ad doesn't perform well.

• Create different destination URLs per ad group.
• Bid at the keyword level.
• Use keyword matching options.
• Include both singular and plural keywords.
• Have more than 50 keywords per ad group.
• Create just one ad group per campaign.
• Choose generic landing pages for each ad group.

To see how your ads are doing on various pages in the content network, launch the Placement Performance Report (PPR). This report shows performance statistics for your ads on specific domains and URLs. You’ll get information on where your ad is shown, as well as the CPC, total clicks, and total impressions from sites where your ad appears.

Before running the report, try implementing either Google conversion tracking or Google Analytics — both free programs accessible in your account. Conversion data often provides the clearest insight about how your ads are doing on a specific site.

Here are some tips for analyzing a PPR report:

• Implement Google's conversion tracking so you can understand how individual sites are converting for you.
• Don't focus on lower overall clickthrough rates (CTR). Remember: A low CTR on a given site does not necessarily mean your ads perform poorly. Users behave differently on content pages than they do on search sites. For more telling information, rely on your conversion data.
• When you find placements where ads from one ad group convert well, consider targeting those placements on the Placements tab in your ad group. Try raising your bid so that your ads will have a better chance of appearing whenever your keywords put your ad on that placement. Or, try doing the opposite with poorer-performing placements: lower your bid to seek a better ROI on those specific placements.
• Respond only to statistically significant data. It may take several weeks before you can see how your ad is doing on a specific site. Wait until you have enough click and impression data before making decisions.
• Use the site exclusion tool to exclude sites that are not converting for your campaign.