I run some AdWords campaign and was tinkering with the site targeting option that allows you to choose the sites you want you ads to appear on. There must be hundreds of thousands if not millions of sites that run AdSense. Google says straight up that your ads will only appear in the sites you choose. You can enter sites with a specifc URL or you can type a keyword or words and Google will pull up a list of related sites. Out of the 35+ sites I run, only one came up for me to check as I site I want to run my ads on, even when I directly entered the domain name. I tihkn over time we're going to see companies using Google's list to check the sites they want to run content ads on. If you're not in that list..... Pretty easy to see what the results will be.
I don't think the big advertisers have the time or the inclination to do that. And, that is where G and Yahoo are making the most money from their PPC stuff.
I run AdSense on 5 sites right now. Site targeting was available for 3 of them. For the two sites that didn't come up, one I just started 2 days ago, and the other one is a very low traffic experimental site I started a few months ago. The three sites that have been around for at least few months that have at least some traffic (the lowest one is around 200 visitors a day), all come up in the site targeted search. Are your sites low traffic or new?
Nope- Newest is about 8 months old and all have been running AdSense since inception. Some are low traffic - maybe 50 -80 a day, but some are 200+ and aren't showing either.... Chachi- Big companies spending a lot of dough are precusely the ones who are going to do this becuase they have the most to save and will get some low level grunt to go through adn pick all the sites. I work as a Search Engine Marketing Manager for a full service ad firm, and our clients are already pressuring us to activate adsense and use the site targeting option.
I think that is just the beginning of the kind of control advertisers are going to have... While it is not good news for people who have smoke and mirror sites, people delievering real customers with a real resource and community are likely to prosper like never before as advertisers target them and their communities of consumers for their advertisements. I think the ultimate result is going to be excellent for those who effort for real content, and a problem for those who cut content in order to make adding clicking more likely.
iShopHQ, I said big advertisers. I am talking about the big, big boys, many of whom have not even really entered the PPC space yet. I am sure you have a good handle on things as you appear to be working with people who pay you to manage their campaigns. But, it doesn't make sense to me that, as an advertiser (IMHO). I would want to limit myself because the site is not "pro looking" or whatever your/their reasons might be. I think it would be interesting to hear what the actual ROI differences are (if any) between a client who ran it wide open and then changed it to a more controlled roll-out.
We have never managed to meet client ROI goals with content ads. We disable them by default whenever we launch a new campaign. We typically saw a cost to acquire the was 4x greater or more than a search only campaign. Now we are putting together some tests (at the insistance of our some of our clients) to try rolling our content ads again using the site targeting feature. My team and I aren't looking forward to spending hours picking through web site listings to select the best ones, but that's what we'll have to do is we want to acheive campaign goals. The affect I see this having on the averge webmaster displaying AdSense is trend that will brings a smaller pool of ads at a lower cost per click. My 30+ personal sites bring in around 45-60 a day aggregate with AdSense right now - I'll be watching closely over the coming months to see if anything changes. From an advertisers point of view, I think being able to choose where I want to chow my ads can be a good thing. As an example, however, Google shows around 60 or so when I look for golf related sites. I know that must just be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the places where a AdSens golf ad would fit. Anyone who'd been doing Internet marketing for a while knows it's all about volume. Better to get an ad out there on 100,000 sites with a .2% click rate than 60 sites with a 5%. Even choosing your sites doesn't solve the inherant problem with content ads. A seach ad is an active ad, in that it results from an action initaited by the user (a search for golf shoes, for example). Content ads are almost totally dependant upon impulse and will always perform at a much lower rate than search ads.
Most small businesses have better things to do than to nitpick over which content sites drive traffic that converts and which don't. Those who hate putting their ads on adsense sites (like me) have already disabled them. Those who like em, will keep em.
I've been in the Adsense program since the beginning, and I have to say that the new site-targetting advertising in Adwords is looking to be a godsend to me. My site has very, very good traffic/impressions but very low CTR. Additionally, the keywords for my site are not very high paying. I have a very loyal userbase who is there to use my site, not to click ads. This is a real content-driven site, and not something hacked to make the most out of Adsense. Yesterday I noticed my Adsense revenue was 2x normal even though my impressions and CTR were normal. Sure enough, by looking at my site, I could see that someone had chosen my site for a site-targetted campaign. And since those campaigns are payed for per 1,000 impressions, sites like mine make money. Of course, it could all be temporary. The company targetting my site right now could stop at any time, and then I'm back to normal. But in the meantime, site-targetting is far from the "beginning of the end" for sites like mine.
I agree Ishophq, you made some great points. Grantmd, that will be key, is if you have quality sites, then it will be beneficial for you aswell as the advertiser. I hope things go this direction more. Some of the adsense guys here will hate it, but they have the option of increasing the quality of their sites now and not wait until everone turns off the content ads.
This sounds like an opportunity for someone to create lists of the "best" sites WRT conversions, and sell those lists to small businesses.
I need to add to my earlier comment about volume Yes, it is all about volume, but if you can't convert the visitors you do get, you'll never be successful. The reason content ads don't convert anywhere near a search ad is because it's an impulse click. Something catches the surfers eye, he clicks over to check it out. They aren't actiev shoppers like someone who jsut came from google after searching for golf shoes. Conversion rates are low already anyway. On the ecommerce campaigns we run, I see between a 1-2% conversion. On lead generation, no credit card required, I see from 6-12% depending on the offer and how much information is requested. On lead gen that wants a CC, I see the same as an ecommerce. Once content ads we weren't even seeing 20% of that.....