I have been upping my bids since Smart Pricing started telling me to up my bids. In some cases it hasn't hurt, I up the bid but the price charged was still low. Overall, it has dented my net income significantly. I recently noticed that the minimums don't affect Content ads, only the search ads. Then I saw the "Inactive for search" which is consistent with the difference I see with Content results. I also see equal or better conversion from Content. So I am opening up some campaigns to include Content since most niches I deal with are business technology related and have lower traffic and less likely to see fraud (not to mention Google's fraud prevention). One strategy I am going to employee is running some Content emphasized campaigns. I'll bid low knowing that I will not be in searches and check my ROI based on Content focused campaigns. I should see good conversion at a much lower cost. Thoughts?
You can have separate bids for content and search. https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=26507&hl=en_US
Rob, I came across that this morning after my little strategy popped into my head. I was going to post something on that but since you brought it up... How long has this been available? I am in Adwords on a daily basis and missed it until I went in to activate Content on a campaign. It's marked New! so I may not be too far behind the news. I can see it helping Adwords users, hurting Adsense users initially but Google will have to help Adsense users to avoid a YPN exodus.
I just saw it today for the first time also. I haven't run any content ads in over a year. I've been meaning to set up some site match campaigns though.
I think it came out late last week. I noticed it my account on friday. I deleted my content only campaigns over the weekend and moved everything everything over to my search campaigns, with lower bids for the content network of course It's a "minor" change that didn't get much press but it's a real time saver and, at least to me, allows for the better overall organization of my acount.
For my topics, both Search and Content convert at about the same rate so I never created separate groups for content. What strategy do you use for Search and Content campaigns? Is it general like pay a lot less for Content? Are there certain segments that you'd avoid Content on? I don't do much with Adwords for light weight topics like ringtones, IM, jokes, etc but business and technology topics are good.
9 times out of 10 the search network has always brought me better returns - and that's partially due to the fact I always bid 50 - 75% less in the content network than I do the search network. Success varies from market to market - the best way to see what will work for you is to run various tests until you have enough data to determine what's working and producing an acceptable ROI on your advertising $.
I noticed the features some where last week. I was having a keywords that get much higher conversion in Content that Search consistently over the last 4-weeks or so. (something like 25% in Content vs 10 to 20% in Search) It is a low hit keyword with about 30 Search hit and 80 to 100 Content Hit. Since it is easier to make separate bid for Content/Search now, I place the same keyword on 5 different new Ad group and 1 existing Ad group. Surprisingly, the Content traffic now is much higher - I see traffic in all 6 groups for the same keyword/text-copy BUT the combined traffic is much higher than the usuall 100+- clicks or usual impression. No change in Search traffic. This trend has been going on for a few days. Anyone care to try this on their campaign? (Note: All 6 Ad group having the same rate for Search, and another rate for Content)