Advertising on the Content Network

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October 1st, 2007 by Nick

Across MSN, Yahoo and Google the fundamentals of the content network are the same. Each network scans the content of sites in their network, and the campaigns that are opted into appearing on the content network will have their ads shown on pages that are highly relevant to both their business and what the user is searching for. The Google network for example has sites such as About.com, NYTimes.com and Gmail, all engines analyse the content and theme of the page, text and language, to assign a context to the site for future reference, so later on the when a new ad comes along they can find the kind of site they are looking to place the ad on quickly and efficiently. The engines match the ad based on the keywords and targeting options, so your ad only shows to the interested audiences.

On each of the engines you set separate bids for the search and content networks, this is due to the fact that the costs are a lot different on each of the networks. In Google you pay on a cost per 1,000 impression basis, if you paid for every impression you received you would be paying a huge amount of money as your ad can be on many sites at any one time. The cost per click is also much lower on the content network which means that the cost per conversion can be low, however, you do not get as many clicks on the content network as you do on the search network it is and should be used as an extra form of advertising. Google also offers site targeting where by you can choose which sites will be of most benefit to you, that is to say, which sites are your potential customers most likely to visit, and only target these sites. This will save a lot on impressions and bring the costs of advertising on the content network down considerably.

Yahoo in the content network works on a cost per click basis, you again have to set separate bids for the search and content networks. The Yahoo Publisher program which is the program that Yahoo use to set users up on the content network as advertisers, does not have the depth that Google’s ad system has, and they seem to be trying to make up for it by biasing their targeting to more expensive ads, which generally causes their syndicated ads to have a higher click cost but a lower average click through rate. In Yahoo you can choose particular categories of topics that you want to target, and use this to target where you think your potential visitors will be searching. This like Google’s site targeting will bring the costs down considerably as you will only be showing on the most relevant pages to your business. This runs on 9 partner sites only Yahoo!, The Guardian, FT.com, Soccernet, The Independent, ITV, iVillage, Lycos & Via Michelin. Yahoo have also introduced seasonal match, where by the users who click on your ad on the content network will be taken to your site and directed to your seasonal merchandise.

MSN’s content network works on a rich media format where by the advertiser can buy blocks of advertising space. These come in number as in you have purchase a block of however many ads you want to show, or you could buy a block of time. This is particularly good especially on an engine like MSN who have niche markets such as travel and shopping where the cost per conversion can be lower than that of Google. Therefore with a little research you could find you when the potential customers you are targeting will be searching and target those at the optimum time of the day. In the USA MSN have recently launched a new content site, which boast the same conversion rate that you will find on the search network, although I think the jury is still out on that one.

The content network can be a useful tool in establishing brand name and adding to the conversions that you are already receiving in the search networks across the engines, but it should be used carefully and the targeting needs to be implemented effectively, only with research into your potential customers will you realise the benefits of the content network. It is often the case that it will work more effectively if you need to split your campaign into search and content, any keywords will be assigned a site based on the ad group they are in so within a content campaign you need to ensure that you have specific keywords for services or products available and less general keywords that you may see in a search campaign. It is also beneficial to split them out so that you can analyse the data effectively, click through rates are much lower in the content network and within the platform everything is averaged. Therefore, any information consists of all campaigns, and so your search results could suffer or you could be working from inaccurate figues.

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