*If you’re opted into Google’s content network, that is.

The Content Network is a pretty good product, but it’s challenging to understand and use. As a result, it’s a source of major waste for PPC beginners. Almost without exception its clickthrough rates and conversion rates are uniformly lower than the Search Network. For most advertisers, the Content Network should be a place where they go once they have maximized their Return on Investment (ROI) in the Search Network.

Why is this? Basically it comes down to the ability of the Search Network to control the message relative to the Content Network. In the Search Network a fairly transparent set of rules about how ads are displayed based on keyphrase selection allows an advertiser to say “okay, for this specific keyphrase I want to see this ad or set of ads.”

The content network, in comparison, displays ads using a much more complex and opaque set of rules that display ads based on the how closely ad copy matches the content on any given page. These ads can be anywhere on a page, on any number of different websites of dramatically differing quality, and in many locations on the page.

As a result, people are

• less likely to see ads
• less likely to find the ads relevant to what they are reading,
• and less motivated to click on them in the first place because they didn’t search for these terms.

Content Network advertising is, at its essence, the old passive kind of advertising that used to dominate all kinds of marketing, from billboards to television advertising.

So why do so many people use the content network? Well, if the cost per click is generally lower. Also, any company that has maxed out its ROI potential in the Search Network should spill over into the content network.

However, most companies just don’t know they are using it. The default setting for any campaign is to have the content network on. We recommend for any PPC advertiser with a limited budget to turn their content network off and optimize the search network first before moving into the content network. Select one of your campaigns in question, go to “Edit Campaign Settings”, and set the networks to look like this:

Repeat this for all campaigns and watch your conversion rates and clickthrough rates go up!

So when can you turn it back on? Here are the conditions for returning to the content network.

1. Only re-enter the content network once you have gotten as many clicks as you possibly can from the search network at your target ROI goal
2. When you come back in, make sure that you can set separate prices for content clicks
3. At the end of the month, identify the best performing websites where content network ads are placed and explicitly use them for the rest of your advertising.

Now go save some money!