Content Placement Ads

Content placement never used to work well for business ROI because of the lack of control that we had over where their ad will appear, as the article maybe a negative or positive about their product/brand. The old search engine algorithms didnt correctly understand every article and unplanned placement can damage your brand or reputation but that has changed in the last 18 months with a massive improvement in the control you have over your AdWords Campaign.

Previously agencies had to explain to clients that their product appeared next to an article that placed doubt on its future. This has changed, but blanket content placement can still cause problems for companies so we advise a carefully researched list of relevant websites that we be targetted based on your campaign requirements.

Content Placement Ad Types

Using the Google Adwords platform it is possible to run various content placement ads types such as flash ads, video ads, interactive ads or text ads. We suggest contacting our agency and we will be able to follow up with some more details and a guide around campaign budgets and likely results from campaign. We have included some real live ads below from real advertisers who are targeting this page based on its content, this will show you an example of how they work.

Text Link Ads – These are useful as they are fast loading and less obtrusive to site visitors, when the visitor clicks a topic link they are taken to a page of related ads. Typically Text Link Ads can have a lower engagement.

Text Only Ads – these show the typical Google AdWords ads shown in the search results but can blend into page and not be noticed.

Image Only Ads – these are useful as they stand out and are obviously ads but have a much higher engagement.

Google VS Bing content placement

Google’s AdWords content targeting works by scanning the page that the ad is trying to be served on and figures out the contextual topic based on the keywords and if these match with the quality score and bid amount the ad is displayed. Google matches the topic to a predetermined list of categories which are then matched to ad groups in the same way.

MSN’s model is much simpler as MSN figures out the primary keywords on the page and then looks for ad groups that have those keywords in it. One good feature of MSN content is that it’s set at the ad group level vs. the campaign level with Google. Setting up each Ad Group on content can be more time consuming on MSN but allows for fine tuning and optimisation in the future.

Expensive Options

If you were interested in running a content campaign like below there is also large minimum spends required to advertise content on high profile networks like Fairfax Digital which start at a minimum of $5000 and the average cost per thousands displays “impressions” with an average $18-20 per thousands impressions. These content networks dont run on Google Adwords so can be more expensive and will quickly spending your budget as the site gets 50,000 to 100,000 visitors a day. This is not saying that content placement doesn’t have a role in advertising but currently there are no safeguards in place for controlling negative articles or reviews, that your ads will pay to support as shown by the Toshiba case study below.

Example Case 1 - Toshiba HD-DVD

There was much speculation about when a decision would be made to concede defeat to Sony Blu-Ray discs, and one very strong article outlined how Toshiba technology had lost the marketing battle and how it was only a matter of time before the unofficial decision was made official. “We have entered the final stage of planning to make our exit from the next generation DVD business,” the Toshiba source told Reuters. But while a decision was pending, Toshiba were still advertising their soon to be mothballed product. This is a major example of how not carefully monitoring of placement ads across news all articles can backfire for PR, this was a not really a relevant article to display Toshiba HD-DVD as it had a negative impact on the company as not understanding their market. Toshiba had bought a bulk ad package and had a set amount of Ads that had to be displayed.