King Content, Advertising Effectiveness & Adwords Placement

“Content is king” is a tired old phrase. But phrases don’t get used enough to get tired unless they warrant repeated use. And this old friend of web content specialists is ever more relevant even, it seems, with respect to online advertising’s effectiveness. Something to bear in mind when setting up Adwords placement campaigns.

According to e-consultancy’s Drama 2.0, who references two recent studies:

“it may be smarter for advertisers to focus on content, content, content — which really means location, location, location on the internet.”

It is not only the relevance of the content that your ad appears in but also the quality of the content that determines effectiveness.

• Referenced study one (Ipsos MediaCT’s MOTION digital video study) says — as Drama 2.0 notes, a concern for the likes of YouTube — that people will put up with ads in video if the video is off sufficient quality.
  • Advertising in downloaded full length TV shows or sports clips, acceptable to 75 & 66% of people, respectively.
  • Advertising before that 16 second clip of the cat, fur bolt upright, sizing itself up in a mirror, not ok.
• Referenced study two, by the Online Publishers Association, finds that:
  

  “…ads on content sites have greater impact on the overall purchase process, including customer awareness, brand awareness, brand consideration, brand preference and purchase intent[...]“

Makes Sense… Relevance to SMBs?

Makes all sorts of sense to me and is, in some ways, statistical confirmation of common sense and existing reality. You pay more for space in quality publications offline not just because they are quality publications with good distribution but also because the implied endorsement makes readers less wary of your message. Same scenario online.

“So. OK. Yawn. Thanks a lot. If I want my ads to be effective online, I have to pay big bucks for popular/recognized authority sites. Very helpful.” says you, SMB owner with your tight ad budget in mind.

Well, yes. Hang on a minute, though. There is an opportunity/point in this…

Where Does Adwords Come Into This

I spent a bit of time creating a Adwords placement campaign for this site yesterday and enjoying the new control on offer.

Google’s content network is an effective, if flawed, traffic generator. People often ignored it in favour of search results because the traffic was generally less likely to convert and therefore less valuable. In my experience, not always the case. But often the way to lift Adwords traffic conversion rates is/was to turn of content network placements.

The newish ability to see sites in the content network where your ads are appearing opens means the content network is no longer an inpenetrable black hole.

It opens up the possibility of focusing on content network sites that refer valuable traffic. What a change. Now you know where your ads appear and you can target very specific sites. Target those authority/high credibility site for affordable rates. (I will report back exactly how affordable after my campaign had been running.

So, that is exactly what I was doing yesterday. The tightest of tight budgets in mind, going through sites in the content network relevant to my services and checking out sites I wasn’t familar with before adding them to my placements.

And the Tie in With Content Quality and Ad Effectiveness is?

With very little to spend I can’t afford to place my ads on sites that don’t have some credibility. I made sure to read a couple of articles on sites I was considering, which were all content sites rather than service providers.

Seems I was right to be wary and you should be too.

Bottom line: Adwords or otherwise, when you are vetting advertising opportunities don’t just think relevance to your target audience; think quality content.

Added bonus: you’ll be doing us all a favour by helping starve those begged*, borrowed or stolen content based sites whose only raison d’étre is adsense revenue. These sites have been cluttering up the web with poor quality content for too long.

And by the way: Also from e-consultancy, and related to the nexus between website content and online advertising, Graham Charlton’s 12 PPC Landing Page Tips are well worth a reading — nothing too startling there but a useful checklist.

*Freelance writing sites and places like Elance and Guru are overflowing with [embed tongue in cheek] amazing opportunities[dislodge tongue] to write 500 words for one of these sites for $2 or even $3. Lest we forget, Internet marketing is sullied by slave labour just like many other industries.