We all know that tracking conversions is crucial to optimizing PPC campaigns. But almost all conversion tracking mechanisms – including the ones used by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and most site analytics packages – are flawed in an important way.

Frequently a conversion happens after the customer has visited the site more than once. This is especially true for sites that sell high-priced consumer goods, or complex technical solutions. The first visit may have been elicited by a PPC ad, resulting from a broad search query like “digital cameras,” or a banner ad on a content network. Subsequent visits may result from clicks on natural search results, and/or PPC ads that are displayed as a result of progressively more-specific search terms.

The final conversion often happens following a brand- or site-specific search on a query like “Buy EOS Rebel XSi EF-S” or “B&H Photo.” But here’s the problem: the conversion is attributed to the most recent site visit. So the keyword that results in the ultimate conversion is highly valued by the PPC advertiser, all previous visits are disregarded, and the PPC keywords that elicited those earlier visits are undervalued.

This can lead to self-defeating bid management; the broad terms that send potential buyers to the site receive low bid prices, or worse, are shut off, since they don’t seem to be resulting in conversions. This short-sightedness afflicts advertisers using manual bid management strategies as well as most automated bid management software available.

Former Google employee Adam Goldberg is trying to lead the charge toward remedying this serious defficiency industry-wide. His company, ClearSaleing, offers analytics technology that lets advertisers track all of the site visits that lead up to the conversion, and attribute value to each action in the path.

That’s why today’s Search Marketing Now webcast, “Measuring an Ad’s Value: A Forum Discussion,” is a must-attend. Adam will lead a forum discussion intended to, in Adam’s words:

“…bring together the online marketing and advertising minds to work together as a community to help collectively identify, evaluate, vet and ultimately recommend the best attribution valuation practices and methodologies.”

We share Adam’s hope that the discussion will lead to better analytical tools from the search engines, and better bid management tools, that will incorporate attribution management that enables advertisers to make fully-informed ad investment decisions.

We’ll be participating in today’s forum, and we hope you will be, too.

My SEW Experts Content Advertising column published today describes a fast, easy method for creating the best possible keyword lists for keyword-targeted content ad groups.

The article references three files used to illustrate the steps involved – you can download them here:

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My SEW column this week goes into detail about Adwords’ Placement Targeting campaigns – basically Content campaigns that let advertisers specify the sites – or site-subsections – where they want ads to appear. Powerful stuff, and a few surprises here.

You will certainly love what you see in my post today on the SEW Blog. I guarantee it. Go there now.

Google just released this excellent overview of the top publishers in their Content Network – including powerhouses like the New York Times, Forbes, Popular Mechanics, Glamour, the Wall Street Journal (hey, didn’t Microsoft grab them yesterday?), TV Guide, Discover, Martha Stewart, Oxygen, HGTV, Monster, FHM, Rolling Stone, The LA Times, Salon.com, CNN.com, LinkedIn, ESPN, Wired, PC Magazine, TechCrunch, TeenVogue, Travel+Leisure, Reader’s Digest, and many, many other prominent publishers.

No wonder traditional publishers are terrified of the big GOOG.

As I posted earlier this month in the SEW Blog, Microsoft is quietly building out their PPC Content Network, starting with premium financial publishers.

Today they announced another move in this direction: Content ads will appear on Wall Street Journal digital sites – a huge coup.

Here’s Microsoft’s announcement – together with tips for using their Content network. last year I interviewed Microsoft execs about their Content matching algorithm, and they told me theirs works differently than Google’s and Yahoo’s. There’s some evidence of that below – apparently separate keyword bids affect the placement of Content ads. We’ll follow up to get more info from Microsoft, and I’ll write about it in the Content Advertising column.

Microsoft and Wall Street Journal Digital Network team up on contextual and paid search advertising

We’re pleased to announce that on Tuesday, January 29, 2008, Microsoft and The Wall Street Journal Digital Network reached an agreement in which Microsoft will become the exclusive provider of contextual and paid search ads for The Wall Street Journal Digital Network (WSJDN), which includes WSJ.com, Barrons.com, Marketwatch.com, allthingsd.com along with other sites.

WSJDN reaches a savvy worldwide audience of over 20 million unique users and serves over 330 million page views per month on its sites specific to the highly sought-after financial services audience for advertisers.

This agreement marks an exciting increase in reach and relevance for adCenter customers bidding on financial services keywords – you asked for more volume, now you got it! Contextual advertising will automatically begin on the WSJDN starting in February 2008. If you are already an adCenter customer who is opted in to Content Ads, your ads will automatically be extended to the WSJDN at that time. Timing for Paid Search advertising on WSJDN is still being determined.

More about Microsoft Content Ads ^Beta

For those of you new to Microsoft Content Ads ^Beta, it’s an advertising offering available in the U.S. that places content-targeted advertisements on relevant web pages, delivering relevant ads to the right people at the right time on the quality Microsoft network, giving you better control over distribution and budget. Microsoft Content Ads is the perfect opportunity to potentially increase your adCenter impressions and clicks as we expand our network of participating sites.

If you’re not using Content Ads, now’s the perfect time to start, so you can reach financially-minded consumers on top sites like wsj.com, msn money, barrons.com, marketwatch.com, etc.

WSJDN, along with our strong audience on MSN Money and syndicated partners such as CNBC.com and EDGAR Online, makes the extended Microsoft network one of the largest financial vertical networks for advertisers.

If you are currently using Content Ads, be sure to keep an eye on your budget to allow for any additional clicks you may see from the WSJDN inventory increase.

Content Ads benefits include:

Control

• Easily extend your Microsoft adCenter search campaigns to the Microsoft content network.
• Manage your campaigns with distribution and pricing controls.

Relevance

• Access to more clicks via technology that delivers relevant ads at the right time.
• All of the targeting features of adCenter search are available to help you connect better with your customers.

Quality

• Exclusive availability to highly-valued content pages on the Microsoft network.

How adCenter delivers a relevant ad

Leveraging years of Microsoft research and technology, adCenter analyzes the content of a webpage to determine its meaning and then matches relevant keyword-targeted ads to display on the webpage.

For example, if you visit a webpage about travelling in the Cascade mountain range, our technology knows that it’s not a page about waterfalls or soap. The result? You get relevant ads delivered on relevant web pages.

How to control your Content Ads

Distribution Control: You can choose between Hybrid ad groups or Content-Only and Search-Only ad groups.

• Hybrid ad groups – this default setting is just a click away allowing you to run the same ads on both Live Search and content pages.
• Content and Search ad groups – this allows you to create a unique destination URL or have content-specific ad creative for each type of campaign.

Pricing Control: Content Ads uses the same bid structure as Search Ads. You can set different bid prices for content clicks by using the Advanced Bidding function at both the ad group and keyword level.

Reporting Control: Advanced reporting features allow you to see exactly how their ads are performing by distribution channel so they can make necessary adjustments.

The Content Ads network

Content Ads are text ads displayed next to relevant content on quality Microsoft-owned websites, such as MSN Money, MSN Entertainment, and Fox Sports as well as participating partner Web sites such as the newly announced WSJDN which includes WSJ.com, Barrons.com, Marketwatch.com, and other sites. Now you can list your business on MSN’s high traffic editorial pages – ad space that was exclusively reserved for limited advertisers.

Content Ads tips – get more out of your Content Ads campaigns by:

• Increasing your bids: start with competitive bids to position your ad to appear. You can then use conversion tracking to understand how traffic converts with your products/services and adjust your bids as needed.
• Monitoring your ROI with conversion tracking: tracking your ROI with adCenter conversion tracking allows you to regulate competitive bidding and adjust your bids as needed.
• Writing compelling ad copy: Since users are not actively searching for products or services during a contextual ad experience, ad copy should be customized to attract a more passive audience.

Content Ads resources

• Visit advertising.microsoft.com to learn more.
• Check out the Content Ads webinar.
• View the Content Ads FAQ.

Normally I don’t link to every installment of my weekly SEW Content Advertising column, but this week’s is a bit different, and I’d enjoy your comments.

This from Google today – most has been reported in previous installments of my Search Engine Watch Column – I’ll elaborate on other points in future columns:

In this third post of our content network series, we would like to share some content optimization tips for your keywords and ad text. In a future post, we will write more about other tips.

Contextual targeting on the content network happens at the ad group level, not at the keyword level. That means all the keywords in an ad group, along with the ad text, are evaluated when Google is deciding whether to show your ad on a specific content page. In other words, it’s important for all the keywords in an ad group to belong to a common theme.

We recommend keeping separate campaigns for advertising on content and search. Please keep in mind that these tips below are specific to contexual targeting and advertising on the content network and may be different from your search network strategies.

• Create a manageable, targeted keyword list.
  Advertisers have found most success on the content network with ad groups of around 15 to 30 keywords.
  
• Use tightly themed ad groups.
  For contextual targeting, we look for pages that match most of the keywords in your ad group. For example, if your ad group has a number of keywords about lilies and tulips, we try to find pages about these two topics together. If you have an ad group with diverse keywords on different themes, it may decrease the number of pages on which your ad is likely to appear. When picking keywords, imagine what keywords would likely appear on the pages that you are trying to target, and create tightly themed ad groups around those keywords.
• Use duplicate keywords for appropriate ad groups.
  To continue the previous example, let’s say you were creating a campaign for flowers and had ad groups for lilies, roses and tulips. Unlike search, we would recommend that the general keyword flowers be included in all three ad groups to help establish a floral theme.
• Use ad group level URLs instead of keyword level URLs.
  Because no one particular keyword is used to trigger your ads on the content network, keyword level URLs are not relevant. We recommend using ad group level URLs instead.
• Measure content performance at the ad group level.
  We’ve found that measuring your performance on the content network at the ad group level offers a better gauge of what strategies work best.
• Build a comprehensive negative keyword list.
  The more negative keywords you include on a particular topic, the less likely your ad is to appear on pages that match that topic. If a page is predominately about your negative keywords, while partially about your positive keywords, our system is not likely to show you on that page. If a page is principally about your positive keywords, but mentions a few negative keywords, then your ad may still appear on this page. We recommend that you include multiple negative keywords on topics you would like to avoid. If you sold camera film and wanted to reduce the likelihood of your ad showing on movie-related pages, you should include multiple negative keywords like -movie, -movies, as well as synonyms like -cinema, -cinemas.
  

We hope you found these tips useful. As always, we recommend that you track performance of your content network ads using Placement Performance reports and set up conversion tracking or use Google Analytics. And please let us know what content network topics you would like to read about in this blog.

This just came out from Google – and it’s good, huge news. Advertisers on Site-targeted campaigns (now called Placement Targeted) can choose to pay on a CPC model rather than a CPM model. Here’s their announcement; watch this blog and my SEW Content Advertising column for analysis and advice:

We’d like to announce two changes to site targeting in Google’s content network. First, because site targeting now offers more precise targeting options, we’ve given it a more appropriate name: placement targeting. Second, we’re introducing a new cost-per-click bidding option so you can now pay per click or per impression.

Introducing placement targeting

When site targeting was first introduced two years ago, advertisers could search for specific URLs or topics to find individual sites in the Google content network and run their image and text ads on these sites. Over time, we’ve introduced other features like targeting by demographics and richer ad formats such as click-to-play video ads. Now, advertisers can target not only websites but also precise subsections of sites, such as the football pages of a news site, the show times section of a movie site, and even a specific ad unit (a block of Google ads) on a particular webpage.

Because of these new changes, we’ve changed the name from site targeting to placement targeting. The term “placement” can be used to refer to any site or subsection of a site that you choose to target. As the number of placements available for targeting continues to grow, you’ll have even greater control over the parts of the Google content network on which your ads appear.

Cost-per-click bidding for placement targeting

With the launch of cost-per-click (CPC) bidding, advertisers can now choose the bidding option that best matches their needs. If the purpose of your placement-targeted campaign is to increase sales, leads, sign-ups, or other conversion-oriented metrics, you can select CPC bidding and pay when users click on your ads. If you want to maximize impressions and increase brand awareness among your target audience, you can select cost-per-impression (CPM) bidding. And you can specify either the maximum price or the average price (with preferred bidding), that you’d like to pay for each click or 1000 impressions.

Along with Placement Performance reports, CPC bidding for placement targeting was one of the most common advertiser requests we received for Google content network campaigns. We’re excited to make this feature available as part of our ongoing efforts to increase the flexibility and control advertisers have when advertising on the content network.

If you’d like to get started on placement targeting, you can read more about it here.

Here’s what the AdWords Help page says:

What is placement targeting?

Placement targeting (formerly called site targeting) lets AdWords advertisers choose individual spots in the Google content network where they’d like their ads to appear. A placement might be an entire website or a subset of a site, such as only the sports pages of a news site. You handpick your audience, big or small. The AdWords matching system does the rest, analyzing your input and creating a list of available content network sites for you to choose from.

• You can select sites for your placement-targeted campaign in two ways:
  • Name the sites where you’d like to advertise
  • Give us a list of words that describe the type of site you’re looking for.
• A site must be part of the Google Network in order to be available for your placement-targeted campaign.
• As with all AdWords advertising, you’ll compete for space with other advertisers. If you choose very prominent and popular sites, you’ll need a higher price to win the ad position.
• Placement-targeted campaigns can take either cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) pricing. The minimum bid with CPC pricing is $0.01 (or the local currency equivalent) per click. The minimum bid for CPM pricing is US$0.25 (or the local currency equivalent) for each 1000 impressions. To check minimum CPM in your currency, please see the account fees finder.

Who should have placement targeting? Should I?

Anyone who has an AdWords Standard Edition account can run placement-targeted ads. We suggest that you experiment and see what works best for you. Advertisers have found placement targeting is an especially good option for:

• Businesses who want to promote an existing brand or a new product to a large audience.
• Small advertisers who want to reach a very precise audience.

Of course, if you’re happy with your keyword-targeted ads, there’s no need to change. Placement targeting is simply one more tool that AdWords advertisers can use to bring their message to highly-targeted groups of web users.

How do I create placement-targeted ad campaigns?

To create a new placement-targeted campaign, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your AdWords Standard Edition account at https://adwords.google.com (if you’re not already logged in).
2. On the Campaign Summary page, find the table titled Online Campaigns.
3. Click Placement-targeted in the ‘Create a new campaign’ section at the top of the table.
4. Follow the sign-up wizard instructions to create your campaign.

MarketingSherpa published this interview today, based on my presentation at their B2B conferences. The article references this list of Google AdWords Content Themes (or Categories) – download by right-clicking on the link and choosing “Save As.”