Well I’m going to sound somewhat contradictory here when speaking about the value of traffic we’re getting from the Adwords ‘Domain Ads’. As I’ve mentioned previously, I respect the skill and volume shown in the domainer industry, so much so that I’ve recently written about it. I even own a small little portfolio of quality domain names and have tested various parking resources recently, some with good success. So my publisher side envies and at time emulates the success that domainers achieve.
On the other hand, I’ve experienced some very poor results in the content network at the hands of parked domain traffic. So in this case, I may be biting the hand that feeds me (not very well). As a client side marketer I am going to show what kind of traffic I get from Adwords Domain traffic.
Courtesy of the Google Adwords Placement Performance Reports, here are screenshots of a spreadsheet covering DOMAIN ADS only for the last couple days for a client in the running a lead generation campaign in the education industry.
As you can see, I’ve changed the name of the adgroups to protect my client (as well as my brilliant proprietary naming conventions). The average CPA in this group - $58. Ugh - that’s just awful compared to the campaign as a whole.
Here are the top 20 traffic generating domains in the content network. Notice the percentage of those that are DOMAIN ADS- which I cannot opt out of…
What’s confounding here is that you can clearly see some domain ads are working, quite well in fact. I would like to reward those domains with a site targeted ad, possibly, but I don’t know who they are.
As a point of reference, and to be statistically relevant, here are stats over that same period:
Content network total -
Conversion rate: 3.4%
CPA - $27.84
Conversions - 68
Adwords Total -
Conversion rate: 5.4%
CPA - $23.51
Conversions - 205
Depending on the day, 1 in 2 or 1 in 3 leads turns into a sale worth $400.
Not a bad business, eh? You can see why they like working with me, but credit to them, they are pushing hard on improving performance week after week, and not settling for the benchmarks we’ve already established.
What can you do to protect your campaign from poor content network performers?
1. Start with Google only in the campaign settings
2. Once you’ve mastered (positive ROI) this platform, expand to the ‘Search Network’
3. Once you’ve mastered these 2, then it’s time to explore the Content Network - my rule of thumb is to start with bids at 50% of the search network (this is a very general rule of thumb, use your best judgment)
4. When you reach a statistically significant number of impressions and clicks on the content network, run a Placement Performance report.
5. Using this data, block any site that is costing you money without providing return.
6. Once the content network provides a positive ROI, increase your bids.
7. Rinse, Wash, Repeat
8. For any star performers, consider a site targeted campaign.
It’s quite simple really, just be diligent and detail oriented. Good luck!
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