Estimating Google Content Network Costs

slamb0513 · #1 (**permalink**) 01-29-2007, 04:34 PM

Hello All. Just wanted to ask a quick question about estimating traffic and costs from a Google pay-per-click campaign.

I have no trouble at all estimating traffic and costs from running an Adwords campaign with numbers from the Google Search Network. In fact WordTracker and other tools make this fairly easy. My problems is that those numbers do not include traffic and costs from the Google Content Network as they are only numbers from the Search Network.

So when I go to my boss and say that it is going to cots $500/month to run a Google PPC campaign and we can expect 300 click-throughs, my numbers can be way off as I have not taken into account the Content Network.

Now I understand that I can run a PPC campaign through the search network only, but this takes away a huge marketplace for my ads to be seen. I have had some campaigns where over 80% of all my click-throughs have come through the content network.

So my question is, do any of you take into account traffic from the content network and if so, is there a place where you can get content network numbers for a keyword?

Duncan Pollock · #2 (**permalink**) 01-29-2007, 08:42 PM

Perhaps rather unfortunately, the only way you'll be able to determine the difference is to run your ad both ways.
To do this, it probably makes most sense to start with Search Only, run it for say two or three works, and then add Content to see what the click increase becomes (assuming there is one!).
However, by many accounts, Search Only gives a (far) better return. It can depend on the nature of your business and how qualified a potential buyer/client needs to be -- and this can, of course, vary with how effective your Ad happens to be -- but Content seems largely destined to bring no one except the slightly curious to you. If you're looking for volume view/contacts (as the SPAM merchants are invariably doing), you can afford the exercise, but otherwise you're likely to be wasting money on tire kickers instead of buyers who are worth the investment.

Duncan

slamb0513 · #3 (**permalink**) 01-30-2007, 05:39 PM

I understand your point. This new campaign I am running is focused on the senior market with people over the age of 55.

We ran a small campaign focused on this back in November/December and found that over 80% of all our click-throughs came from the content network as opposed to the search network.

In other campaigns, however, it was more like 60% search, 40% content.

It may just be that the senior market does not use search as much as they read and research individual sites. Or it may have just been a fluke.

Anyway, from what I have been reading, that is really no way to determine content traffic. It is very unstable and can be hit or miss depending on the day.

myfreeforum · #4 (**permalink**) 02-02-2007, 02:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duncan Pollock

Perhaps rather unfortunately, the only way you'll be able to determine the difference is to run your ad both ways.
To do this, it probably makes most sense to start with Search Only, run it for say two or three works, and then add Content to see what the click increase becomes (assuming there is one!).
However, by many accounts, Search Only gives a (far) better return. It can depend on the nature of your business and how qualified a potential buyer/client needs to be -- and this can, of course, vary with how effective your Ad happens to be -- but Content seems largely destined to bring no one except the slightly curious to you. If you're looking for volume view/contacts (as the SPAM merchants are invariably doing), you can afford the exercise, but otherwise you're likely to be wasting money on tire kickers instead of buyers who are worth the investment.

Duncan

I think you're right, however if you set your content bid lower (which you can do with adwords), you'll get cheaper traffic. I usually set my bid on content to less than half of what I set the search max bid too, and it seems to work out o.k.