This post is a follow up from my previous post on Optimising Content Campaigns. What I've tried to provide here is a guide to analysing the data, rather than making changes to the campaign itself.
What is a Placement Report?
An AdWords generated report (which you can access from the Report Centre in Adwords) that shows you exactly which websites you’re content adverts have appeared on. It contains all the usual performance metrics of your other AdWords reports (clicks, impressions etc.) so you can analyse performance.
How to Analyse Placement Reports
- Since CTR is naturally lower on the content network, base your performance on conversions, and not CTR.
- Sort your data by the right areas that are most important to you – for example sort by clicks or cost focusing on the domains/URLs where your ads are getting the most exposure.
- Act only on statistically significant data. Wait for enough data to accumulate before taking any action, for example sites with few impressions, or those with many impressions and few clicks – these sites may be valuable once enough data is accrued.
- Run the Placement Report and the URL level so you have the necessary granularity to determine the type of content your ads are appearing on.
- I recommend running the report once a week so you have enough data to base your decisions on.
- At the end of the day you should be focusing on which sites are delivering the best ROI. Use the site exclusion tool to exclude sites that are not meeting your desired objectives.
- If you find your adverts appearing on many irrelevant websites, try including negative keywords into your Content Campaign.
This can be a rather time consuming task, to make it a little easier you can also try filtering out sites with fewer impressions. If you use this report effectively you can only reap the benefits.
