The Google Content Network: The Biggest Ad Network in the World.

I’m not kidding – Google’s Content Network reaches more than 80% of global Internet users, and serves over 6 Billion Ad impressions a day! Are you getting your fair share of those impressions?

I’m a big fan of the Content Network from an advertiser perspective for many reasons. While a big factor for me is ease of use, every day I am blown away by the sheer power and potential of a network that has such a massive online reach.  It’s just mind blowing.

I’ve posted before about Optimizing for the Google Content Network, and the truth be told, up until now everyone, including Google,  seem to have very different suggestions on content network optimization strategies in general.

However,  I read Josh Dreller’s article over at Search Engine Land last week and was impressed with the level of information he’s provided. Check it out if you have not already – ‘Why You Can’t Ignore The Google Content Network – AdSense Q&A’. It’s an  interview Jasper Seldin, Content Optimization Specialist at Google.

I’m not going to re-hash the whole article here as that would be pointless, but I did want to highlight one paragraph that I think holds the key (although somewhat cryptic in parts) to success on the Content Network…

The question put to Jasper was “We all know by now that Content Targeting extrapolates the idea of your ad group via the keywords and then matches it with a theme and runs on those sites. Can you go into more detail about this process?”

Jasper: Google performs page analysis on every page in the content network. First, we scan the page and pick out words we think are most relevant to the content on the page. We can tell headlines from footers and can pick up on words that repeat often or are emphasized with bolding or italics. Together, these words create concepts. Concepts tell us the unique meaning of each page. There aren’t a finite number of concepts, unless you count the number of words that convey unique meaning.

And of course, we look at related concepts and see how they roll up into entire categories. It’s these concepts and categories that you are ultimately targeting with your keyword list. When you select keywords, we analyze the theme of the keyword list and place you on pages where the themes and categories match. An ad group can target multiple themes, but we recommend only targeting one theme with each ad group to ensure that you are putting the right message in front of the right user.

Really very interesting…

• On the content Network you are targeting ‘concepts’ and ‘categories’ not keywords, pages, or sites (unless you’re doing placement targeting…).
• Google scan all pages on the network and pick out the words they believe are most relevant on a page and tie them together as concepts.
• They then look at how concepts are related, and tie them up into categories.
• The Keywords you select in your AdWords campaign are then themed by Google and your ads are placed on pages where your theme matches the category or concept.

And the most important piece of information of all…

• If your Ad Group targets more than one theme, chances are Google are not able to effectively match it to the right category on the network. So while your ad group could target more than one theme.  Don’t!

One of the best content targeted Ad Groups I’ve ever run had, wait for it…, one keyword, and one ad.

Theme? Tick!
Concept and category matched by Google? Yes!

Now I’m not saying that only one keyword per ad group will work every time,  but If you only need one keyword to establish your theme, then job done!