COMING IN AUGUST…

Want to know where the REAL opportunities in the content network are hiding? The places where you have the most power and the most control over who sees your ads? Want to know how those $50K and $100K a month accounts are tapping into the highest quality, most targeted traffic in AdWords?

The SECRET is with Placement Targeting!

Managed placements is one of the most popular methods for utilizing the Google AdWords Display Network because it gives you the MOST control over bidding and where your ads are shown.

Finding Placements will explore over a dozen different strategies and tools to help you locate the most targeted and profitable placements…and fast.

Stay tuned for more information and make sure you are opted into the free newsletter, The Content Network Pulse, for more information.

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

A LOT has happened in the content and placement targeting space since my last email blasts.  I promised I would kick off a fresh new newsletter, blog and YouTube channel in 2010 so this newsletter is the first of many to come. *Preview* – I’m working on a video kick off where I show off my other ninja skills for walking on my hands!

Live Online Coaching Series:

Want to know how to save money and be more efficient at optimizing your Contextual Advertising? Next Wednesday, I will be kicking off an Intermediate Content Network Boot Camp with Perry Marshall. It will be four weeks of live coaching in a webinar format with 24/7 access to recorded material and lots of bonuses. The live beginner course sold out quickly and this course is over half way sold out.

AdWords Masters Summit – Maui – March 1-3, 2010

If you want to combine a Maui vacation with three days with some of the top Internet marketing speakers, trainers, coaches and gurus in the country…come with me to the AdWords Masters Summit in Maui, March 2010. I will be speaking along with Perry Marshall, Bryan Todd, Glenn Livingston (Rocket Clicks), Richard Stokes (AdGooroo.com), Amit Mehta (PPC Classroom), Jonathan Mizel (Traffic Evolution) and MORE.

Contextual Advertising Basics – Radio Interview

Want to know more about content and placement targeting? I got the opportunity to discuss the basics of contextual advertising with Ed Frazier and Lisa Mckibben on the “Everything Internet” show on CNN 1190.

Radio Recording
“Everything Internet” Show Info:

That wraps up the first edition for 2010. Future newsletters will cover a variety of contextual advertising topics:

* Beginner to advanced strategies for everything from:

• developing keyword themes
• setting up placement targeting
• analyzing placement reports
• strategies specifically for image, video and mobile ads

* Information and reviews on other content networks (beyond Google AdWords)
* Information and reviews on some of the great tools and services to help you kick off, expand, optimize and manage your content and placement targeted accounts
* Information on opportunities for conferences and trainings on contextual advertising
* Where to find free tools, blogs, tweets, videos and more to help you learn more about content network strategies.
* YouTube and mobile strategies will also be coming soon

If you have specific questions or topics about contextual advertising that you would like to see covered in the future…just drop me an email.

~Shelley Ellis

Only a few seats are still open for the Intermediate Content Network Boot Camp starting January 20th, 2010

I am addicted to domains…there, I admit it!

Over the years I have purchased domains for my web design company, for a directory of off duty firefighter’s companies and services, for a sign company, for my paid search company and for a variety of special interests that I have been involved in.

I think part of my addiction is that I am so GOOD at the domain name game (it has to be that pay per click keyword background!). I love NameDroppers.com and I have tried a few similar sites where I can not only see if the domain name has been taken but I can see similar domain names and even domain name recommendations.

For the first time in ten years, I have started letting domain names “go back”. For someone with my level of domain name addiction…that’s really tough! Maybe it is the economy and the fact that I’m cutting back just like everyone else. Maybe I have realized that I can never follow up on all the new business ideas I conjure up when I get into a domain name brainstorming mood.

So today is a sad day as I say good-bye to more domains…knowing that they will be scooped up by the buzzards known as domain page holders. (she sighs and hears the bagpipes playing in her head)

From Andy Beal’s Article:

“Conduct a search for anything and change the filter to show results for just the past 24 hours. Like so:

http://www.google.com/search?q=iphone&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:d

See that qdr:d at the end? That tells Google to show results from the past day. Go ahead and change that to qdr:n and you’ll get results from the past minute!

http://www.google.com/search?q=iphone&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:n“

My twelve year old son just got his junior scuba diver certification. Even though he understands the limitations associated with his age and training, he still believes he is capable of handling any diving situation…and without our supervision and guidance…he would certainly find ways to test his skills.

From the time my youngest son was around four or five years old, he has been telling us that he wanted to be a SeaWorld trainer. We sent him to SeaWorld camp around kindegarten and he is already showing signs that he is gifted with both domestic and wild animals. Around eight or nine years old, he added marine biology to his “when I grow up” conversations. My husband and I were tossing around the concept of marine biology and decided that getting his scuba certification would not only help him work towards his goals but it would be a certification and skill that he would have for the rest of his life. So last Christmas, my son got scuba lessons and equipment.

Because of his age and limited experience, his certification limits his dives to 40 feet. Anytime he dives, a professional diver has to go with him. Between now and 15 years old, he can get additional training and certifications that will allow him to dive to 60 feet and after he is 15, the restrictions will be lifted.

I work with a lot of young companies. I have watched so many of them try to learn marketing on their own – as they go. I have also watched a number of those companies fail. Not because they had a bad product or idea…but because they didn’t do a good job marketing. The most successful young companies that I have worked or dealt with sought out experts to either handle certain aspects of their marketing or they realized that with an ongoing investment of time and money, that they could get the training and experience that they needed to handle certain elements of their marketing on their own.

Confidence and desire do not equal training and experience…

Austin is young and inexperienced, with just a few dives under his belt. He feels like he’s ready for any type of dive but as parents, we know that he isn’t ready to tackle the more challenging scuba opportunities. With  more training and more dives under his belt, he will eventually be ready for the ocean or cave diving or deeper lake dives.

If you are a young company and you plan on handling some of your marketing in-house, consider taking the time and putting aside some of your marketing budget for training and/or coaching to help you with the learning curve. At the very least, find a mentor, someone who has been successful with the marketing method you are interested in using for your company. Start small so that mistakes are not as painful or costly. Build your experience and as time goes by, you will be ready for bigger projects and bigger budgets.

People often ask me about bidding strategies for placement targeting. I’m working on an interesting placement targeting experiment right now related to bidding and my results are so unusual that I thought I would share them.

• I copied the same AdGroup containing about a dozen individual placements into seven separate AdGroups.
• Each AdGroup has a different CPM bid starting at .50 then going up in $1 increments (.50, 1.50, 2.50, etc.)

I just checked my results for today and I have impressions showing in the 3.50, 5.50 and 6.50 AdGroups. Sometimes its on the same placement. Sometimes its on different placements.

What’s missing? I still don’t have URL data. It should be interesting to see if the bids are playing a role in what pages my ads are being shown on.

Take-away from this CPM variable bid test: Bumping up your bid may not give you more impressions because my impressions today were equally distributed between the three different AdGroups with three different bids.