The Jake Group recently produced a series of rich media ads for placement on TalkingPointsMemo.com, one of the millions of websites that are members of Google’s Display Network.

The Google Display Network is the non-search-related portion of Google’s AdWords advertising platform. The Display Network is comprised of millions of websites, blogs, and email newsletters and has a total reach of about 80% of all internet users. Websites can opt-in to be a member of the Display Network, allowing Google to manage some or all of their ad sales and placements. Advertisers can use the familiar Google AdWords interface to buy inventory on any or all of these member websites.

Most major websites are members of Google’s display network, from Facebook to Amazon, from Yelp to The New York Times. This fact offers AdWords the most extensive and diverse reach of any existing online advertising platform.

Display Network Ad Formats

The Display Network serves all industry-standard ad formats:

• Text Ads
• Image Ads
• Video Ads (In-Stream or Click-To-Play)
• Rich Media Ads (Flash)

Note that the standard AdWords interface does not allow for the use of fully custom rich media ads. Custom rich media ads must be served through third-party ad servers.

Buying Ads on the Display Network

To buy placements within the Display Network, an AdWords campaign must have the Display Network enabled under the Campaign Settings tab.

The process of adding a Display Network ad to an ad group is very similar to that of adding a Search Network text ad. Click the “New Ad” button within an ad group, and select your desired ad format. Ad groups within AdWords can be set up to serve ads for both networks simultaneously.

As with Search Network ads, maximum bids can be set for either CPC or CPM (or CPA if using conversion tracking) for Display network ads. Since the performance of Display Network ads varies greatly from their Search Network counterparts, the quality scores of each type of ad are maintained independently of each other, even when housed within the same ad group. Bids for each type may also me set independently.

Display Network Ad Setup

Non-text ads for placement within the Display Network can be setup in AdWords by selecting “Image Ad” or “Display Ad Builder” after clicking the “New Ad” button.

For image ads, simply upload an image, name it, and provide a URL destination.

Rich media and video ads are setup through the Display Ad Builder. Video ads of multiple formats are able to be created by selecting “Video” from the Media and Channels section. AdWords provides a number of (ugly) templates for interactive/rich media ads that can be configured with custom text and images. Further customization requires a third-party ad server.

Display Network Placements

There are two main types of ad placements within the Display Network: automatic and managed.

If an advertiser opts for automatic placements, Google will automatically place their ads where it sees fit within the Display Network. If the ad group has keywords (as it should), AdWords will use those keywords for contextual targeting to place your ads on relevant pages. (Automatic placements are made on the page-level, not the site level, for maximum relevance.)

Choosing the managed placement option provides considerable control over where ads appear. Advertisers can select the specific webpages, websites, or categories that they would like their ads to appear on without the need for keyword relevance. With managed placements, an advertiser can also set unique bids for particular placements. When using managed placements, placements can be added or edited under the “Networks” tab in Adwords.

Using either placement option, advertisers can always choose to exclude certain websites or categories from your ad placements.

The performance of individual placements can be monitored by running URL reports, found under the Networks tab in AdWords.

Links and References

Here are a few useful links to learn more about the Display Network and to aid with ad campaign research:

• Display Network Homepage: http://www.google.com/ads/displaynetwork/
Learn more about the Display Network or get started as an advertiser.

• DoubleClick Ad Planner: https://www.google.com/adplanner/
Research statistics and demographics for most websites, and see if they are part of the Display Network.

• Google AdWords Education Center: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=examstudy.cs&rd=1
Learn more about properly executing Display Network ad campaigns.

• Highest-Traffic Websites: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=examstudy.cs&rd=1
Browse the 1,000 most popular websites within the DoubleClick Ad Planner.

Weekly Budget

Be sure to establish a weekly budget right away, before any of your ads start running. Accidentally running up a thousand dollar bill is not the best way to start a campaign.

Open Your Toolkit

Google has a couple tools to help you decide which keywords you would like to include in your advertising campaign. The keyword tool will help you brainstorm variations and permutations of your search phrases. The find keyword tool within AdWords will help you get a sense for how many people search for your specific keywords, as well as how expensive bids may be for them. There are also numerous third-party tools to help you manage your AdWords campaigns.

Start Wide, End Narrow(er)

Each different keyword is an entirely unique and independent market. When starting your campaign, it’s best to start with a large number of keywords and their variations. As the campaign proceeds, the data will show you how to trim the fat from your keywords to maximize the value of your ad dollars. You may be surprised to find that one variation of a keyword does a great job sending buyers to your website, while another yields only wasted clicks, visitors who leave your site immediately without a purchase.

Know Your Match Types

When selecting keywords, be sure to know how to effectively use the four different match types: broad-match, phrase-match, exact-match, and negative keywords. Using different combinations of each type can reveal less competitive, less expensive markets. Negative keywords are particularly valuable. Type a minus sign before a specific keyword that you don’t want your ads displayed for. If you are selling legal services, add “-pro bono” to your keyword list to avoid paying to attract visitors who don’t intend to pay.

Using Ad Groups

Organizing your campaign into appropriate ad groups is a great way to drive more traffic to your site for less money. Each ad group should include all of the keywords that you want for a particular ad. Keep in mind that the more your ad matches the keywords, the better. Keeping ad groups small and specialized increases the relevance and effectiveness of your ads.

Optimize Your Ad Copy

The best thing about PPC advertising is the ability to instantly make evidence-based modifications to a campaign. By constantly running two different versions of your ad for each ad group, you can compare the efficacy of the versions, and continuously optimize your ad copy. When you have a large enough sample for each version, keep the better one and try to beat it with a new alternate version. Repeat.

Send Visitors to the Right Place

Don’t setup your AdWords ads to link to your homepage, unless of course the home page is the most relevant page on your website. All links in your ads should lead directly to a page that is all about the keyword the visitor searched for. This will reduce your ads’ bounce rates, and will lower the cost of your ads, as keyword – landing page relevancy is one of the factors Google uses to determine your keywords’ quality score.

Keep an Eye on the Statistics

Google Analytics is AdWords’ best friend. Be sure to link your AdWords account to your Analytics account if you have both. This setting can be found under the “Reporting” tab in AdWords. If your site is properly setup with Analytics, you will be able to see important behavioral statistics of the visitors your advertising campaign drives to your site. You can even see differences in visitor behavior between different keywords. If you have an e-commerce site, Google can track how ad-driven visitors spend money on your site. Keep on top of these statistics, and you’ll be able to emphasize your most valuable keywords, and trim away keywords that have a negative ROI.

How AdWords is Organized

Your AdWords account contains one or more ad campaigns. Each campaign contains one or more ad groups. An ad group is an ad accompanied by one or more keywords you have chosen for the ad.

Splitting Ads into Campaigns

Each campaign has settings to control where and when the ads within will be displayed, as well as an optional weekly budget. If you want to run ads in two different regions of the country, or at two different time periods, split those ads into separate campaigns. Campaign settings also allow you to choose what devices you would like to show ads on (mobile or desktop), and what facet of the Google PPC system you would like to buy ads on.

Selecting Your Audience Geography

If your business offers services to a particular region, you don’t have to waste your money advertising to the whole world. AdWords Campaign settings make it easy to choose exactly where you want your ads to be displayed. You can choose by Country, State, and City. If your business is super-localized, you can even draw exactly where you want your ads displayed on a map.

Using Ad Groups Effectively

Ad Groups should contain two versions of an ad (learn why in a future post), and their corresponding keywords. Ad groups should be as specialized as you can make them. Ads that are extremely relevant to the associated keywords cost less and are more effective. Create different ad groups for each individual category of search term you are considering.

Writing Ads

AdWords ads consist of one header line, two description lines, one display address line, and one actual address line. When exact portions of the keyword search appear in your ad, they are shown in bold. For this reason, ads that contain the exact keywords themselves, especially in the header line, attract more attention, and perform better than those that don’t. AdWords ads don’t allow enough space for verbose language. Keep your message succinct, and direct. The display URL line allows you to type a web address that will be displayed in the ad. This does not have to be the actual page that visitors will be directed to. The landing page is defined in the actual URL line.

Bidding on Keywords

Bidding is the most complicated aspect of managing an AdWords campaign. Every time a user searches for something using Google, there is an automatic, virtual auction occurring in the background, to determine what ads will be displayed as “sponsored links” along with the users search results, and in what order they will be displayed. The rank of your ad in the auction, however, is not based on your bid price alone. Google also takes into account the relevancy of your ad and landing page to the search keyword, as well as the historical performance, or Click Through Rate (CTR), of your ad (how many people clicked on your ad divided by how many times your ad was displayed).
Start the process by selecting keywords for which you would like your ad to be shown. There is an option to let Google automatically set your bid prices. If you want to be more hands-on, you can manually set them yourself. Each different variation of every keyword is essentially a unique market, and requires its own bid price. The bid price you pay to have your ad on the first page of search results can range from $0.05 to $30 depending on the level of competition for the keyword. Google will tell you if your bid is too low to be displayed on the first page.

What is PPC Advertising?

When a user searches for something on a search engine like Google, the search engine displays “sponsored links” in addition to the regular search results. These “sponsored links” are PPC ads, and they are set to display for searches that are relevant to the products or information that they offer. They’re called pay per click because instead of paying for impressions, the advertiser only pays when users click on the ad and are taken to the advertiser’s website. Google is the world’s most popular search engine, and their PPC advertising service, AdWords, is a great place to get started with your own PPC campaigns.

Why PPC May Be the Best Form of Advertising Ever

PPC advertising is growing quickly because it has four huge advantages over other forms of advertising:

1: It’s easy. At the basic level, Google makes it easy to setup an advertising account, and to start making bids on keywords. Since the ads are simple text, they’re easy to write and tweak. After you have your campaign setup, it can be totally automatic, driving traffic to your web page with no effort at all.

2: It’s budget-friendly. With PPC, you are in complete control of how much you spend. You can be up and running with AdWords for as little as $5. Ad-driven traffic will continue until your weekly budget is reached, then your ads stop running. It’s that simple. The more money you have to spend, the more traffic you can drive to your site.

3: It can reach anybody you want. Instead of broadcasting a uniform message to a large and possibly ambivalent audience with traditional advertising modalities, with PPC everybody who sees your ad is looking for something related to what you are offering. Simply bid on keywords that users who would appreciate your services would likely search for and viola.

4: You can quantify it’s success. Oftentimes the value of advertising is difficult to precisely measure. Not so with PPC. If your website is set up correctly, Google allows you to measure your ROI to the cent. With this statistical evidence, it’s easy to make instant adjustments to your PPC campaign to boost profits. Try that with television advertising.

Conclusion

With a properly set up PPC advertising campaign, you can attract more customers for less money than with any other ad medium. While it’s easy to get a PPC campaign set up and running, know that experience can play an important role in optimizing your campaign to maximize the return on your ad dollars. And remember the unmentioned prerequisite for PPC marketing: a fantastic website. Your ads are worthless if your site can’t turn visitors into customers. For tips on getting started with AdWords, see my next post.