Section 10.4. Site Targeting

10.4. Site Targeting

Site targeting means specifying sites by domain for your ads, rather than using keyword targeting. Each Ad Campaign can implement either keyword targeting or site targeting .

Implementing site targeting is a two-step process. You must:

• Enable site targeting in your AdWords account

• Choose site targeting for new Ad Campaigns

In other words, once you've turned on site targeting globally, you can then elect to use site targeting in a specific campaign (but not keyword targeting for the same campaign).

Site targeting essentially means using Google as an agent for CPM, rather than CPC, advertising. Site-targeted ads appear on Google's content network only and not on Google search results pages.

By site-targeting your ads, you are saying that you don't really care about click throughs and that the primary purpose of your ad is to promote brand awareness.

10.4.1. Enabling Site Targeting

To enable site targeting in your account, open the My Account tab. Click the User Preferences link. Under Campaign Types, click the Edit link. The Campaign Types window (Figure 10-28) will open.

Figure 10-28. If you enable site-targeted campaigns, then an Ad Campaign can be either site- or keyword-targeted

Check the Enable site-targeted campaigns box, and click Save Changes.

10.4.2. Creating a Site-Targeted Campaign

Once site targeting has been enabled, when you create a new Ad Campaign, you can choose between Keyword-targeted and Site-targeted (Figure 10-29).

Figure 10-29. Just because you've enabled site targeting doesn't mean you're stuck with ityou can choose between keyword and site targeting on a per-campaign basis

Select Site-targeted, and click Continue. Next, create a text or image ad the way you would normally for a keyword-targeted campaign.

Once your initial AdGroup for the campaign has been created, you can start the process of site targeting, shown in Figure 10-30.

Figure 10-30. You provide a few sites and descriptive terms so Google can make suggestions of sites to target from its inventory

First add some sites where you'd like to see some ads in the Sites box on the left. Next, add a couple of descriptive phrases to the Descriptive Terms box on the right. Click Continue. As you can see in Figure 10-31, Google will come up with some suggestions from its available inventory of content sites that match your terms for you to choose from, along with traffic estimates for each of the sites that it has available.

Choose the sites that interest you from the Google-generated list of Candidate sites and add them to the list box shown at the bottom of Figure 10-31.

Figure 10-31. It's worth taking the time to investigate the Candidate sites that Google suggests to make sure that you really want your ad to appear on them

It's work taking the time to review any sites you don't know well to make sure they're really appropriate for your site targeting. Since the primary purpose of CPM advertisingand site-targeting is a form of CPM advertisingis promoting brand awareness, you should be careful about the context surrounding your ad (meaning the pages on which the ads appear). For example, it wouldn't do at all to have an ad for a prestigious car appear on a sleazy site.

Click Continue when you are satisfied with your site selection. The next window, shown in Figure 10-32, will let you set the maximum CPM, or cost per one thousand ad impressions, you are willing to pay for ads in your site-targeted campaign.

At this point, you can create another Ad Group for this site-targeted Ad Campaign or click Continue to set a budget for the campaign with the single initial ad. Figure 10-33 shows a setting for the daily budget for the campaign.

Once your daily budget has been set, click Continue to open the campaign review window, shown in Figure 10-34.

If all is in order, click Save Campaign to add the site-targeted campaign to your account. It will now appear in your account summary of campaigns (for example, the bottom campaign shown in Figure 10-35).

Figure 10-32. The maximum CPM you enter amounts to a bid for placement on a site; your ad will appear if this bid makes it worthwhile for the site operator compared to CPC ads and other CPM bids

Figure 10-33. Be careful when setting your daily budget that you enter an amount you can live with!

Figure 10-34. AdWords always gives you plenty of chances to review your campaign choices to make sure your campaign will work for you

Figure 10-35. The new site-targeted campaign appears in your account summary right along with more typical Google CPC campaigns