Bids are set at silly prices $50 - $150 cpm in the placement targeted network. Getting zero to very few impressions. This is happening again and again with our placement targeted campaigns. What gives?
I've had problems getting things to work well using placement targeting. I've used good quality images and only facebook.com has given me any joy at all, whatever I've tried to promote. Often it gives impressions and clicks for some days then dries up. We've pretty much given up.
I found some suitable websites for my Placement campaign and made relevant text ads recently. Conversion rate is the same as for keyword-targeted campaign but CPC is twice lower. I am really satisfied. Try to play with the ad's text.
I'm using target placement as well with a good max bid and max daily budget with the likelihood of ad appearing as "good" but can only garner a handful of impressions. Don't know why it's not working for me.
Adsense help doc says "If your site is part of the AdSense network, it should automatically be visible to advertisers as an available ad placement when they search for themes or topics related to the content of your site." Well I went to the placement tool in adwords and selected "list urls" and put in one of my own sites that has adsense on it, and it said placement targeting was not available for that site (my site, which is in the content network).
I found this from adwords docs: Why can't I select the site I want for placement targeting? An individual site may not be available for placement targeting for several reasons: * Site is not in the Google Network. Sites can't be targeted if they have not joined the Google Network of advertisers. * Site is opted out of placement targeting. Advertisers in the Google Network can choose not to participate in placement targeting. If a site has made that choice, you won't be able to target it. * Low impressions. Sites with a very low number of daily impressions may not be available for placement targeting. This is because we can't guarantee there will be enough impressions available for advertisers to target. * Format filtering. If you have selected format filtering while using the Placement Tool, then the site you have selected may not offer ad space in the formats you have selected. For instance, you may have chosen to filter for placements that show 250x300 rectangle ads, and the site you want may not offer ad space in that size. * Location or language targeting. The site may not match your campaign settings for language and location. For instance, you may have targeted your campaign to Japanese-language users, and the site may be in English. There's tons of sites that would do well with my ad, but I can't reach them, and adwords staff does not know why the site is not available according to the placement tool, or why it gets no impressions if it is manually added in "edit placements and bids". There is the possibility that the publisher has opted out of placement targeting but with this one site I want to target I'm thinking that's not likely, because they hace adsense ads from many diff companies and I doubt they hand entered these urls as allowable on their site. But of course there is no way of knowing for sure because the adwords rep can't go in and look. I would love to be able to target more sites closely using placement targeting but can't seem to get on the sites I want to.