So what's the big secret to profiting from Google's content network?

As I deal almost exclusively with the Adwords content network (as opposed to search) I'll share some of my ideas about targeting Google's huge content network.

I'd like to say that the content network isn't necessarily better or worse in performance than the search network. It's not the case that Google's search network is the gold standard, or benchmark, which all other means of advertising are compared to. Search network advertising does not provide the most targeted venue for ad placement in all circumstances.

Of course, generally this is so, but not always so. You need to learn how to look at it more critically. Thinking in black and white terms such that it is either content or search and not seeing any ways of distinction among the variants of each one is erroneous.

Continuing this, if you have to pick between search and content without critically examining each one or seeing any subcategories of each one, then go with search.

But the content network, when done in a certain way, can out perform the search network; you've just got to know what you're doing.

If you add content bids to an already existing search campaign, you'll likely see that the content clicks don't result in many sales. Doing this will place your ads on a wide array of sites which you have little to no control of. Your ads will appear not just on reputable authority sites, but on a huge number of crappy sites, MFA sites and the like (I must add that sometimes MFA sites perform pretty well, but not always). I recently found out that one of my campaigns was appearing on a site that instructed readers to "help out and click some of the adsense ads on this site". I reported this site to Google just as my ad spending for the questionable site reached $10 - for about 7 clicks!!

So what's the big secret for profiting from Google's content network?

The big secret to milking cash from the Adwords content network is to create site targeted campaigns.

When you use Google's site targeting feature, you get to choose which sites your ad appears on. This is different than the way that people usually use the content network, where you don't have control as to what sites your ads appear on.

Here's some more benefits of site targeted campaigns:

1. You can choose what sites your ads appear on. That means you can have your site appear on authority sites for your niche, sites that people passionate about your niche will visit. When you have ads that show on an authority site for a particular niche, I feel that to some visitors it gives a sort of implied endorsement of your ad. Some people may think  that the authority site displays your ad because they think what your selling is a great product. Some visitors may see that as a recommendation from the authority site.
2. Another thing is, when you create a site targeted campaign, the text of your advertisement will be very big. It will be larger than the regular adsense ads on the web page, and will therefore command more attention.
3. Better page placement. Normally, when people add content bids to a regular Adwords campaign, they don't know where there ads will appear on the web, but they also don't know where their ads will appear on any particular web page. Will it appear at the top of a page? Or will it be buried at the bottom of a web page where people may be less likely to see it?
   
   I regularly advertise on sites that have an Adsense block near the top of the page, where there is an Adsense block visible on page load such that a visitor does not have to scroll to see it. Sometimes you'll find sites where the only Adsense block is up near the top; those are good sites to advertise on because more people will see them even if they do not scroll down to the bottom of the page.
   
   When you find sites that display Adsense in highly visible places, you'll naturally get higher clickthroughs. And when you do this with CPM bidding, you're going to see very low prices for clicks.
4. Create image ads that match the look and feel of the sites you're advertising on. If you're site targeting on a site that mainly uses the colors blue and red, you can advertise on that site with banners that are blue and red, or colors that complement the colors blue and red. You can essentially match the look, feel, design and character of any site you advertise on with the Adwords site targeting feature. What I'll do sometimes is create a banner template with a separate color layer. This color layer can be customized to match any site that I advertise on.
5. Advertise on specific topic targeted pages. If you're selling rhinestone studded horse saddles, not only can you advertise on a domain that sells horse saddles, you can advertise on a particular page of that domain that is specifically about "rhinestone studded horse saddles". This is golden because the people that come to that page from the search engines will likely be pre filtered such that they are definitely interested and looking for what you're selling.

That's just a sample of what I'll tell you. And I could go on and on about the benefits of and the techniques for monetizing Google's content network through site targeting, but for now, that's just something to chew on and hopefully you'll see the great potential of this advertising medium. I'll write more about Google's content network later, I'm sure, because that's something I'm passionate about.

And one more thing; If you want a cool tool that lets you easily find sites to advertise on that are a part of Google's content network. I created such a tool. Take a look at my Google site targeting site finder.

---