When marketers start using Google’s Placement Targeting, the sheer amount of choice out there can be quite intimidating. How do you pick Adsense publishers that will drive traffic to your site out of the thousands and thousands that are available? And how do you do it for the best possible price?
Google’s placement targeting works in a similar way to Google Adwords. Much as you would narrow down what search results you wanted to appear in by targeting specific keyword sets, with placement targeting you can narrow down where you want your Adsense ads to appear. By searching either by keyword or a specific site, you can decide exactly where you want your ads to appear. A chosen placement could be a website, a subset of a site, or an ad position on another product. This allows you to handpick sites, and even specific pages of sites, that you think will help to sell your product.
Anyone using AdWords Standard Edition can use placements. You can even add placements to an existing campaign; simply click on the “Placements” tab on the main page of the ad group. There are four ways to identify placements: “list URLs’, “describe topics”, “browse topics”, and “select demographics”.
You can use all 4 options when deciding where to put your placements. With each search, up to 100 available placements will be listed, with the approximate number of impressions per day listed. You can also refine your search by the type of ad you want to run by clicking on “Choose Formats”. Select the formats and sizes that you want to use, and Google will refine the list to show only the sites with the selected formats available.
The absolute best method for finding sites to advertise on however, is not to use the info that Google provides, instead you want to find sites that are showing up in the top 10 rankings of Google for specific “high traffic” keywords. This allows you to be sure that your ads are being seen by targeted prospects and are on sites that you know get traffic.
This is where the free tool AdWordsDigger comes into play!
This is an extremely powerful free tool that allows you to enter as many keywords as you want and it will go to Google and find the top ranking sites that have AdSense on them for each keyword. You then simply take the info they provide pop in into your AdWords campaign and BINGO low cost and extremely targeted ads. You can download AdWordsDigger 100% free from:
Another option with Google’s Placement Targeting is you can choose whether or not you want to pay for the campaign using CPC (cost-per-click) or CPM (cost-per-thousand; the M’ stands for the Roman numeral meaning 1000′). While CPC campaigns have become more popular because you only pay for people who actually click on your ads, the price of CPC ads have increased significantly in the past couple of years. A CPM campaign, when used in conjunction with careful placement targeting, can be an economic alternative.
The theory behind this is that is you’ve carefully targeted the websites your ads are going to appear on, then your click-through rates are going to be much higher than the average, making the CPM option (with lower costs because there are no guaranteed click-throughs) better for your campaign. It is important to remember that you will need to constantly analyze the results of your campaign to ensure that your CPM costs are, in fact, saving you money versus CPC. If sites are not performing within the standards you’ve set for the campaign, remove them; likewise, if a particular site is giving you a great click-through-rate, invest more impressions in that site.
Google’s placement targeting is a great resource if you want to make the most out of your Adsense campaign. It is a valuable resource for anyone running an online business who wants to drive lots of traffic to their site for the best possible price. The placement targeting system also allows you to run a CPM campaign to get you click-throughs at a much lower rate than you’d be paying for a CPC campaign.
Don’t forget to also download your free copy of AdWordsDigger, so you can get the absolute best return on investment with Google’s Placement Targeting. Check it out now at:
