Hello, I'm wondering if there is a way to have your PPC ads appear in the sidebar ads in Gmail without opting into the entire content network. I thought that it might be possible by adding mail.google.com and gmail.com to the "managed placements", but that didn't work. Any help is greatly appreciated. Also, and I hope this isn't inappropriate, if anyone needs any hard copy direct mail services (you know, what everyone did before search advertising and what still produces decent results), check out the companies I work for here: www.selectmail.com and www.mailmore.com Anyway any help with the gmail question would be awesome. Thank you in advance
To advertise on gmail, you must opt into the content network as gmail is considered part of it. As you don't want the entire network, you should use managed placement. But you know that already. You should however also specify some keywords, one of the few instances I say to do so with managed placement. Of course, your ads will appear based on the same factors as the rest of the network: best click rate and bid gets highest position.
Managed placement URL for Gmail is "mail.google.com" The CTR % is lower than average but it gives you a lot of impressions.