I was reading an article this morning about 23 amazing ad fails and it really bothered me that so many companies still don’t know how to avoid “most” of the possible embarrassing ad situations on the content network.

The content network has a number of ways for you to control where your ads are shown or not shown. Before you turn your content network campaigns on, you should walk through these steps to minimize awkward ad placements. After you turn your campaigns on, you should monitor your placement performance reports to look for potentially reputation damaging sites.

Step #1. Set up standard category exclusions.

• Log into your AdWords account
• In your Campaigns Tab, highlight one of your content network campaigns
• Go to your Networks Tab
• Scroll down and click on Exclusions
• Under Campaign level, click Add Exclusions
• Select Exclude Category
• For reputation management, you may choose to exclude standard categories like gross and bizarre, sexually oriented and death and tragedy

Step #2. Include negative keywords.

• Log into your AdWords account
• In your Campaigns Tab, highlight one of your content network campaigns
• Go to your Keywords Tab
• Scroll down and click on Negative Keywords
• Reputation management keywords are probably appropriate at the campaign level so under Campaign Level, click add, add your negatives and save
• There are obvious negative words you would always want to use such as “scam, death, kill, murder, etc.”
• Depending on your industry, you may want to add additional keywords. For instance, an airline might use negatives for words like “crash, burn, attack, bomb”, etc.

Step #3. Exclude specific sites or even pages of a site where you don’t want your ads to show.

• Log into your AdWords account
• In your Campaigns Tab, highlight one of your content network campaigns
• Go to your Networks Tab
• Scroll down and click on Exclusions
• Under Campaign level, click Add Exclusions
• Select Exclude Placement
• You can either exclude sites you are already familiar with and don’t want your ads to show on or you can use your placement performance report to exclude sites off the report after your campaigns have been running.

For daily tips and strategies on Content Networks, AdWords and Internet Marketing, join my Facebook Fan Page.

To your success!

~Shelley

PS I posted several videos to my YouTube channel over the last couple of weeks. In case you missed them:

* Finding Placements Using an AdSense Directory (Searchforecast.org)
* Bidding on Keyword Themes in the Content Network
* Below the Fold – Step by Step

Google just announced a new option for content network advertisers called “below the fold”. If you want to keep your ads above the fold, this new option allows you to “opt out” of “below the fold” ad distribution on the AdWords content network for both content targeting and placement targeting. I walk you step by step through how to turn this option on or off. Who needs this? Definitely anyone doing branding or CPM campaigns but any aggressive campaign might want to use this new option.