Google have two main networks. The ‘Search network’ and the ‘Display network’. The display network you may have already noticed, this is when you could be browsing a website and notice either a text or image ad labelled in the corner with ‘Ads by Google’. If you have high click costs on the search network but need more traffic on site, the display network is a great option to trial.
Why? Cheaper clicks costs. More traffic and the allowance to place image, static or flash ads on relevant sites in the humongous network.
Best way to initially do this is to set up a separate campaign just for the display network. It’s a different way to advertise and needs to be treated as such. You can use the placement tool to find relevant websites and just add them in, but to start I always find its best to add keywords that you think are relevant and allow Google to match them to websites. Then you can see where they have ended up, how they have performed and then have a managed placement campaign where your ads are just appearing on sites of your choosing.
The reason for this practice is that their are so many pages in the network, they are not all included in the placement tool list so you may be shooting yourself in the foot before you have even started. Alternatively you could do both, run a managed placement campaign and an automatic one. Both you can keep track off in AdWords and see how they perform. You can also tag the URL’s using the analytics url builder which will then pull the relevant website into Analytics instead of coming in as ‘Non Set’ and you can look into bounce rates, time on site etc.
When you have the data, sites which aren’t working you can block – just add them as a negative placement. Some people always add you tube and potentially gmail as negative placements to any display campaign. It’s just annoying to have adverts when you are watching something on you tube and feels invasive when you are sending a private email to someone and ads which match the content along the side.
