Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Online advertising expert David Szetela is owner and CEO of Clix Marketing, one of the few agencies that specialize exclusively in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Szetela's twenty-five-plus-year career working for small magazine publishers, as well as Apple Computer and Ziff-Davis Publishing, has provided him with experience in direct-response marketing.

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Customers Now

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Introduction....................................................................................xvChapter 1: The Future Is Content................................................................1Chapter 2: The Secrets of Content...............................................................9Chapter 3: Something Old; Something New: Merging Keywords and Content...........................13Chapter 4: Using Google Placement...............................................................21Chapter 5: Integrating With Other Content Networks and Exchanges................................27Chapter 6: Content's New Business Model: Using ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange.....................33Chapter 7: Writing Effective Text Ads...........................................................41Chapter 8: Beyond Text: Adding Graphical Ads to Content.........................................51Chapter 9: Landing Pages: Who Are Your Customers and Where Are They Going?......................59Chapter 10: Reporting and Measuring Content Advertising Performance.............................65Chapter 11: Optimizing Content Campaigns........................................................71Conclusion: Customers Now.......................................................................81

Chapter One

Legendary adman Jay Chiat once described a round of golf as "very fascinating, very addictive, and incredibly challenging. You're never satisfied. It's kind of like advertising." Chiat didn't live to see the advent of search engine marketing, but his observations fit with what search engine marketing is today. Search engine marketing has come close to satisfying its users with its ability to be measured, analyzed, and optimized. The growth of SEM certainly shows a continued attraction, as advertisers continuously search for that magic keyword that will drive clicks and revenues.

There is still much more ahead for internet marketers. Even if you're a Google AdWords pay-per-click advertiser, one who's getting spectacular results, there's another level. It's very likely that you can increase your profitable sales significantly - by up to 75-100 percent - while at the same time, create more customer demand for your products or services. This not-so-well kept secret comes in the form of learning to mount successful campaigns using a little-understood capability built into Google AdWords, which is advertising on the Google Content Network. It also comes in the form of a new ad exchange that's making it easier for advertisers to mount and manage campaigns: ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange.

AdWords is hardly a secret. Campaigns display ads on search results pages, at the top and right side of the page, when a search is performed on Google and on Google search engine partners (like AOL) - collectively known as the Search Network. The ads displayed are relevant to the person who typed in the search term. Such as this example below, using the term "red sneakers."

Less well-understood is the fact that, by default, ads also appear on web site pages - sites that have chosen to participate in Google's AdSense program to "monetize" their content. When a site visitor clicks on an AdSense ad, the advertiser pays for the click, and Google shares some of the click revenue with the site owner. Google calls this network of sites its Content Network. Here's one example of what an AdSense ad looks like:

Advertising on content networks allows advertisers to reach a huge proportion of internet users - many times the number of people who use search services to find specific sites covering specific topics. Even better, advertisers can reach potential customers before they're likely to conduct searches - avoiding crowded ad competition on the search pages. But tapping into this huge network requires specific best practices and techniques that aren't widely known. This book will expose them. Those techniques are often counter-intuitive to PPC advertisers who are accustomed to think in terms of ads displayed as the result of search engine searches, and the best measure of success.

Many AdWords advertisers have tried advertising on Google's AdWords Content Network, only to watch click costs soar while revenues and profits failed to keep pace. Others have shied away from advertising on the Content Network because they've heard that it delivers "poor-quality traffic." But that thinking needs to be re-examined. The truth is that Content Network advertisers can get excellent results: better-than-acceptable conversions (sales or leads) that deliver profitable revenue to the bottom line. The key lies in understanding how Content Networks operate, and adopting best practices in controlling ad placement to attract potential high-quality site visitors (perspective customers).

As mentioned, content-based campaigns display ads on the web pages of site owners who participate in a search engine's ad serving program. Google has AdSense, while Yahoo has Yahoo Publisher Network. Microsoft will soon roll out a similar program. We will spend a fair amount of time in this book detailing the strategies and tactics for successfully using ContextWeb's content based ADSDAQ Exchange.

First let's take a look behind the scenes. How does Google "decide" which ads should be served? Google's ad-matching software examines the words (content) on the web site's pages, and then examines its ad inventory - PPC ads and associated keywords - and displays ads that best match the content of the site pages. ADSDAQ's matching software works differently. It matches advertiser-specified Categories with pages within its content network, freeing the advertiser from trying to intuitively decide on keywords that describe such pages. The advertiser gets matched with site visitors who are interested in the relevant ads. The potential customer sees ads that relate to the interests that drew them to the site in the first place. Site owners earn revenue that supports their ability to continue to publish valuable content.

Then why the perception problem with content-based advertising performance? The first is the "last click attribution" obsession. Advertisers place undue importance on the last click before purchase and that obsession often unfairly credits search engine keywords. Compare it to driving down a busy highway filled with billboards. A billboard for a steak restaurant at the beginning of the trip may start the attraction toward the restaurant. A billboard in the middle may push a customer to want to learn more about its menu. Another one may close the deal in the customer's mind. The last one may rate a call for a reservation. All the ads are valuable, but the last one gets the credit.

In the best cases, advertisers have traditionally had to settle for the fact ad response rates - click-through-rates (CTRs), or the ratio of clicks to impressions - have usually been much lower than those they get from search advertising. Even worse, conversion rates for content advertising, the percentage of content-ad-generated site visitors who buy or submit a lead form, are traditionally lower. There are three main reasons for this difference.

First, since content ads are ancillary to web site content, the ads are not actively read as frequently as search ads. At worst, they're considered to be annoying distractions. Second, the software that matches Google keyword/ad group...