Adwords Site Exclusion
Filed Under (AdWords, Pay Per Click Campaign Management) by Jeff Hudson on 30-07-2007
I’m going to do everyone a favor and give you a head start on the Adwords Site Exclusion feature - as you may have noticed I’m quite obsessed with the new content network reporting that Adwords is offering. If you spend a lot of money in this platform and you’re not running these reports - bless you because you’re making my job easier. If you ignore the content network because someone told you a horror story about losing money and low ROI, bless you again because you’re making my job easier. **sarcasm** - You should be running on the content network, it’s absolutely necessary in order to scale your campaign to the highest levels.
Adwords Site Exclusion is one of the primary control methods in running a successful content network campaign. In order to use effectively, you will need to run a Placement Performance Report. This report will tell you which domains or urls are sending traffic that isn’t providing a good ROI. Pick out those underperforming domains and paste them into a txt file. You should compile a running log for each campaign or client you are managing. For example, a domain that I will block 99% of the time is myspace.com, but if I’m running a campaign for a particular band or tshirt company or dating, for example, I would probably reconsider. Point being, each list of excluded domains should be unique to the campaign you are managing. This is not a one size fits all tool.
With that in mind, I’ll get you started with a list that I am building for one particular campaign that competes in a legal services niche:
123mycodes.com
codestogo.com
commentbuddy.com
coolmyspacecomments.com
freelayouticons.com
freepagegraphics.com
freeweblayouts.net
freeweblayouts.net
mycommentcodes.com
mycrunkspace.com
mynicespace.com
mynicespace.com
myprofilepimp.com
myprofilepimp.com
mypsace.org
myrockinprofile.com
myspace-codes.com
myspace-crash-codes.com
myspace-crash-codes.com
myspace-help.com
myspace-pictures.com
myspace-surveys.com
myspacepicturecodes.com
myspacesugar.com
mywackospace.com
mywackospace.com
mywackospace.com
pimp-my-profile.com
pimp-my-profile.com
pimp-my-profile.com
pimp-myspace-code.com
profileeye.com
profilegoodies.com
profilegoodies.com
pyzam.com
quackit.com
seekcodes.com
myspace.com
youtube.com
Happy excluding!
This is an interesting technique. But what if you were primarily interested in running CPM campaign, but using low bids on the content network. Would you ban myspace then?
Good question Michael (and sorry, I need to keep a better eye on pending comments)…
My understanding here is that your are running a CPM campaign with low bids to get traffic. Sure, that makes sense, and of course, we all know myspace is about the cheapest traffic out there. There’s a reason it’s cheap - because it doesn’t convert well for many advertisers.
My answer to your question would be > If you are tracking conversions by source, and you’ve seen that myspace traffic converts at an acceptable rate with a positive ROI - absolutely do not exlude it. If you’re keeping myspace in the mix just for the sole purpose of generating impressions and cheap clicks - well, I can’t say I see the benefit in that, unless you are selling advertising based on those 2 metrics.