Have some questions about writing ads for the content network... First, do keywords in your ad really make any difference for QS for content network? Since keywords are supposedly just to give a "theme" for the type of page you want to target, your keywords don't necessarily appear on the page anyway... and certainly may not be the main focus of the site. So, I would tend to use broader headlines and descriptions in my ad.... but is this huring my quality score and my ad serving rate? As an example, I might target a geo term like California Mortgage (I don't play in the mortgage market) but my ad might be served to a page comparing rates for several different states that just has the word California on it... but with visitors from many different states. Obviously I would prever not to mention California in the ad in that instance... but does the QS calculation want me to have California in the ad b/c google thinks the word California makes it especially relevant to the page? Second issue... What types of general ad text/structure seem to draw clicks in the content network that you might not use for search campaigns? Seems like I see a lot of ads with question marks in the title, and numbers in the description on the content network, so I assume those perform better... but what is your experience?
As I understand it, the Quality Score applies to both Content Network and Search Network. Having the search term in the title substantially increases the quality score, so yes, you should include the word California in the top line of the advert. I've never looked at the content network in isolation when a:b testing adverts, so if anyone's done some testing in this area and discovered differences in what works compared to the search network, I'll be interested.