For those of you who use Google site targeting on the content network, do you do run-of-site targeting, or do you target specific pages? The resource I read said NOT to use run-of-site, and that the effort to target specific pages is well spent (apparently the home page is almost always a money pit, and there are other pages that are best avoided like contact and privacy pages) Only problem is that google doesn't allow that many placements in an ad group! I had about 1,000 placements and was rejected when entering a group of 2,000 more. So page specific targeting seems unworkable with such a low amount of specific pages allowed. Any thoughts on this are appreciated especially workarounds to the page limit (more ad groups?)
I totally agree with the resource you read. You should target specific sites, indeed specific pages if possible, related to your offer. There is a 2000 keyword limit per group. That extends to the content network as well, so as you found out, you can only enter 2000 placements. I suggest you create more groups. Try to theme them somehow, just like you would do with a search campaign. So let's say you are selling the new Beatles box set. Create a group for Beatles specific sites, maybe one called Beatles Forums another Beatles Blogs and put only appropriate sites to target in each. Another group might be called General Beatles Info and you'd put sites like Wikipedia's Beatles page in there (assuming they allowed ads) and biographical pages on each member. You could have yet another group of forums and blogs about Rain, the Beatles tribute band and another for the Rutles, the Beatles parody band. Not saying those would convert but an idea to try. Those ad groups would be your primary ones. Your secondary ad groups would be sites about music in general. Since classical music lovers would not likely be interested in the Beatles, or at least less so, don't target those types of sites. You could therefore have groups called Rock Forums and Rock Blogs. Maybe Rolling Stones fan are likely to buy this box set. Find those sites and put them into a Rolling Stones ad group. There may be some music stores that put ads on their sites (why, I don't know). Take advantage of those and have an ad group just for them. How about lyrics sites? Music download sites? Memorabilia sites. Online radio sites. If the lyrics sites don't not convert for example, you can stop promoting to the whole category in one click. I don't know your specifics but this example should explain the idea. Created themed groups, find sites and put them in appropriate group. If there's hundreds of sites or pages, keep it manageable and split into other groups. Maybe UK-based sites in one group, US in another.
I recommend: 1. Definitely go with the run-of-site options as well as the page / location targets. The key is to continually review and optimize all placements against your goal. 2. Yes, build out multiple ad groups if you must have many thousands of placements, but if you're going for conversions, site targeting may not be the way to go. To make it work, you're going to have to watch lots of data extremely closely to find where your conversions might come from.
How are you serving the ads? Be careful about using accelerated delivery - I have found that you can end up having your ad show up at the top and the bottom of the same page (costing you 2 impressions if you are buying CPM instead of CPC) Also, accelerated can end up showing your ad to the same visitor on every page he visits so you could potentially end up with a lot of impressions wasted on only one viewer. It also seems that Google will just shut down your impressions if you have a bad CTR when paying CPC. If you are using CPM Google does not care about your CTR, but if your CTR is not 10% or higher, you probably won't be profitable. That's my 2 cents!