If you run automatic placement campaigns (keyword themed campaigns) on the Google Display Network, you have probably run across anonymous URL’s in your placement performance reports or through your networks tab if you are checking your stats from your Adwords user interface.
As if targeting wasn’t hard enough with automatic placements, throwing anything anonymous into the mix certainly doesn’t help from an optimization standpoint. Those URL’s leave advertisers flying blind with a lack of transparency on the Google Display Network.
I had the opportunity to interview Marc Phillips from Search Forecast about a breakthrough that allows Search Forecast to de-anonymize those anonymous Google URL’s.
Marc’s team is already finding ways to use this new information with clients but this discovery is so brand new that over the next few weeks, Marc and I will be digging deeper to see what this information really tells AdWords advertisers and to see how we can use it within the AdWords Display Network.
The interview is up on YouTube and includes a number of powerpoint slides. You can view it here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npn7e2vfxJk
