Jun 19
2008PPC Banner Advertising On The Content Network
Filed Under (Content Network Tutorials) by admin on 19-06-2008
Tagged Under : Content Network, Image Ads, Placement Targeting
This is part 1 of a 4 article series that will discuss image advertising on the content network.
So as everyone knows, the content network is making a comeback. Today I am going to talk about pay-per-click banner advertising on the content network with highly targeted site placement. Banner/Image-Ad advertising is often overlooked because of the simplicity of just using text/adsense ads on the content network. I’m going to show you some unique advantages Banner/Image-Ads present and why you might want to begin running your own (especially if you’re decent at making graphics). First I’ll start with 2 good examples of affiliates running Google Image-Ads on the content network.
YouTube Image-Ad Advertising - Ringtones / Music
This is something you’ll see everywhere on youtube (which often means someone’s making money with it). There are banners on the video pages for almost every song and artist. They usually advertise ringtones, but I’ve seen folks advertising eMusic.com, Rhapsody, or other music download services.
“Myspace Resource” Site Targeting - Webfetti
The reason why I like this example is because the ad looks like it’s this website’s navigation. I’ve seen better examples, but I grabbed this one. The buttons are nice, shiny, and tempting to click. This affiliate is running the webfetti $2.50 payout. There is a huge amount of myspace resource site inventory that can be advertised on. CPC can’t be more than 10 cents on most of them. If you get 1/10 to download the free toolbar you’ll profit $1.50 for every dollar spent. 1/20 and you’re still in the black. Fun. There’s also a SmileyCentral offer on many affiliate networks that would work with this same myspace resource inventory, smilycentral pays $2.95.
You get the idea.
One more quick word about the YouTube 350px-200px Image-Ads. There are tons of opportunities to monetize videos from all kinds of different niches through affiliate banners. The best part is, you don’t have to make a single video! heh HA!
While writing this post and looking for just a few examples (w/out using any of my own) I couldn’t help but notice how many missed opportunities and how much low hanging fruit is out there in the content network via image-ads. I’ll reveal a couple, but I will mainly focus on how-to get started in part 2-4 of my PPC Banner Advertising On The Content Network series. Thanks for reading!
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments.
It’s really easy to completely forget about site targeting, especially when starting out. Great tips! Looking forward to the rest of the series.
I know this post is a bit old but I’m just starting to learn about this kind of advertising.
Wanted to ask: I’ve found a few sites where the same person is advertising their banners. When I refresh multiple times, their ad is still the only one. I’m assuming if I started a campaign and selected these same urls to show my 300×250 that Google would rotate our ads.
Do you know if this is true?
Also, I thought I read somewhere that you can choose CPM so if this other guy did that, and I added my ads to the mix, I wonder if I’d still be able to show or if his CTR would be too strong as it looks like he’s the only one advertising.
Any tips?
Thanks
Hi Scott thanks for reading.
I have found that when you exact target specific sites that you want to advertise on you tend to get the bottom barrel of available ad space for quite some time. It’s taken me a month for my ad to continually show up on a site I exact targeted and placed a high bid on. I believe this is a fault in the adwords system and I am sure that google will fix this some day soon.
There will be a couple other factors that will be in play when you publish your 300×250.
Google claims that CTR is not a factor in content network bidding, but there’s no info specifically to image-ads. I believe CTR is a important factor which is why your ad should be designed well. Such using a similar color scheme that’s used on the site to target to blend the ad in well which will get you a higher CTR.
The other factor is bid price, if your bid is considerably lower, your ad will not show up in prime locations until the lone advertisers’ ad spend is all used up. Have you checked the site at all hours to see if the other advertiser runs out of ad spend eventually? If s/he doesn’t ever run out of ad spend and the ad is showing constantly, then that’s actually a good thing because it tells you the advertiser values the site highly and you’ve found a good website to begin targeting with your offer. Don’t shoot out of the box with a high CPM or CPC as I’ve found that you will just get the garbage ad impressions anyway.
Start low and gradually increase your bids, but be prepared to wait a couple weeks before your ad shows up consistently.
The content network is gold mine and you’re on the right track. Good luck! Let me know if you need any more advice.
Justin M.
Great stuff. How long do we have to wait for parts 3 and 4?
Hi Justin,
I’ve read that you can direct link image ads on the content network. Is this possible?
You absolutely can direct link image ads on the content network. With the content network you don’t have to worry about display and destination URLs as much as you do with search because you don’t have to worry about sharing impressions with someone else who might be direct linking.