I took over a campaign. All the content and search keywords are in the same groups. I don't want to change this at this stage. However, if I pause the keywords that aren't working in the search network, this will then stop the keywords working in the content/display network and have a big effect on the amount of impressions and possibly the content network conversions. How can I tell if the keyword has converted in the display network?
Hmmm, By my experience you should let one day the keywords paused and at the end of the day when google releases your data you should check the historical data of the previous day and the exact day 1 week before. If data shows decline in CTR that means the obvious. Hope i helped.
The display network doesn't use individual keywords in the way that search campaigns do - it uses the keywords in the adgroup to ascertain a theme (only 50 keywords per adgroup are used, if you have more, they are ignored)
Hi mike4545, I'd strongly recommend to separate search from display/content traffic, to run on different campaigns. Your keywords have a completely different meaning on the display network, compared to their more-obvious-meaning on the search network. I assume you're bidding lower on the display network (otherwise you're probably losing many dollars), and still it's worth to separate the 2 networks. As I understand it the traffic originating from GDN (Google display network) is more like “Push†strategy, as it is for Banner advertising, rather than “Pull†strategy, as search netwrork's marketing basically is. Meaning: When you bid, say, $2 and more for a click is because you assume the ad will be presented to a user who actively searched for your product. On the other hand the GDN user has almost accidentally encountered your ad, and is less eager to engage with the site. It's very hard to get insights from this mixed data. Splitting the networks to 2 campaigns will make the optimization process much easier. If you still prefer running the 2 networks on the same campaign then ValueTrack parameters on your destination URLs can help distinguishing. Also it's very useful to add negative keywords and negative placements. Good luck
ok thanks for all your advice. I paused 3 keywords and the display network impressions appeared to go down significantly. Obviously it would be better to split to search and display network, but if I can't do that would it be better to keep the 3 keywords running but at a lower cpc for the search. The display default is obviously much lower. Secondly Magda, what you said about 50 keywords, does that mean if I had just 30 keywords I'd get less impressions on the display network than if I had 50? thanks
The amount of impressions from Display is generally 1-3 magnitudes greater than search. That's natural. A search impression and a display impression are 2 different creatures, so that adding them up doesn't mean much. Now how to differentiate between search and display performance? If you count on AdWords data (low discrepancy, no various conversion values involved) then you can regard Keywords Tab's data as Search performance, while Placements Tab's data is Display performance.