ok, here we go: The first thing is, note that i am on a VERY low budget. That is, currently i am on a 2EU/Day budget...roughly 60EU/month..which is almost $100/month. (Yeah..weak dollar So...i am constantly juggling the number of adgroups and went from 50 or so DOWN to currently 3. I also lowered my bids and shoot for an optimal bid of 0.12c per KW...preferrably even lower. It sucks if people click 10 times on your ad and your budget is reached. My Question now: I see that i have ONE adgroup which seems very "in demand" and i see LOTS and LOTS of impressions and a relatively high amount of clicks. All those impresseions (99,99999%) happen in the CONTENT network ! Its for a specific product. Q: do i have a benefit in disabling the SEARCH network and target only the content network ? Would it matter ? All my ads in general have VERY low rank (because of my budget)....so they usually dont show in the first goole-page anyway. But LOTS of impressions in the content network. Q: Number of Ads etc...based on my very low budget...should i focus on ONE (and only one ?) ad to save money ? thanks ! Add: Should i even MORE lower my bids....say even lower than 0.12 and target the CHEAPEST ones i can get, maybe do more research and be more specialized ? Its a huge problem if my budget is so limited..so is the number of clicks...so i have to do everything to "maximize" this already low budget ?
At first you have to ask yourself, what you want to achieve by AdWords advertisement. Is that clicks or profit? If clicks, then you need to focus on costs. If profit, then the main focus should be on ROI (return on investement). 1. Traffic from search has lower quality, usually it has lower ROI 2. Traffic from search can have lower costs. 3. If you have low budget divide your adgroups to have it specific as it is possible (keywords in text ad, in landing page).
The truth is that you have to test and experiment. Unfortunately, there is no one formula for success. Using more targeted keywords always helps.
The content network can be anything from brilliant to pants. Impressions are usually MUCH higher (in my experience), but not always. Clicks are usually cheaper (in my experience), but not always. Clickthrough rates are always poor, as people aren't searching for your product. Conversion rates are usually lower (in my experience), but not always. If you have a restrictive budget, I assume you want to get as many conversions as possible for your money, in which case you should focus on the distribution type that delivers this (and the keywords that do this, etc). If you're using up your budget before the end of the day, you want to reduce your bids (if you can, without going inactive). This way, your CPC is minimised, and you get as many clicks (and hence conversions) as possible for your money. Remember that you can adjust your content bids separately, so you can limit your exposure on the content network, if that's what you want to do...
With low budget, put higly targeted and specific keyword, i recommend you to off the content network at the beginning of your campaign, many forget to off it and they don't know how to use it to their advantage, and it will cost them a lot of money (wasted).
is the traffic that you get from the content network relecant and does the traffic turn into conversions?
That varies from case to case - sometimes yes, sometimes no. If your advert is clear about what you offer, then not many people will click on it that aren't really interested (though you're bound to get some...). And the clickthrough rate doesn't matter - it doesn't impact your QS in the way that it does on the Search Results... As I say, it's usually worth a try - sometimes you'll get cheap conversions, sometimes you won't.
For beginners, i suggest you off your content network. Content network usually works well if you know how to handle ist, so for beginner,monitor your ad campaign without content network on is better and make things easier to handle.
Not totally sure that I agree that the content network is not for beginners - as the clickthrough rate is far less important (since it doesn't impact keyword QS), there are fewer variables to worry about. If you fire it up, and get cheap conversions, it's worth doing. If it doesn't work for you, turn it off. The only thing that I would say is that it needs close monitoring - sometimes Google will suddenly add your advert to new sites, and the traffic can jump by 1000% overnight (which was good when it happened to me last week, but it can be very bad!).