Clearly someone at Fairfax doesn’t understand how to control where their ads do & don’t show on Google’s Display Network. And they’re not alone. So if the phrase “negative placements” means nothing to you, read on…

The sites on which your Display ads (typically text or image ads) show are called Placements in the AdWords system.

There are typically 2 types of campaign you might run: Automatic & Management Placements.

Managed Placements are exactly what they sound like – placements (websites) that you manage. You give Google a list of the sites on which you want your ads to show & Google puts them there.

This gives you more control (you know exactly where your ads will show), but also limits your reach (you have to think of every site yourself)

The alternative (& often a great way to run campaigns) is to make use of the power of Automatic Placements. Now Google will decide where to place your ads based on information you give it (more on this later).

The downside here is that Google is in control & your ads may show in places (or next to content) that you don’t want associated with your brand.

That’s where Negative Placements come in.

They give you a way to stop showing ads on certain sites. For instance,a negative placement we use a lot (on 99% of campaigns) is adsenseformobileapps.com which we’ve found to generally give poor results across the board in many different industries.

So, it would make sense for whoever’s running the Fairfax Digital campaign to exclude theage.com.au from the campaign showing ads for The Age.

Sure they’ll make a few cents if someone clicks their own ad – but why pay for the click/impression in the first place?

Far better to save that space for an ad that makes them money (assuming they have covered their online properties with ads to make money!).

Maybe it’s some warped idea of brand-building… but c’mon who really thinks they need to interrupt a user with an ad for their own service while using that service!

If you want to get a bit more advanced, you can use ‘Placement Exclusion Lists‘. A newish feature that Google quietly rolled out recently that allows you to create lists of sites & exclude them from campaigns more easily. This is great if you’re also running other types of Display Network campaigns such as topic targeting, interest targeting or remarketing campaigns.

Sadly there’s no way to easily share your lists between client accounts if you’re running an MCC account – maybe Google will add that one day. But given negative keyword lists aren’t even in ADWords Editor yet, we may be waiting a while!

Last tip…

If you are running ads on Aussie newspaper sites, you may want to exclude them from your main ‘automatic placements’ campaign & run them in their own managed placement campaign – so you can more easily see their performance & adjust bids as needed. Sometimes these sites work very very well for clients, other times they suck. It’s just one more thing that you must test if running ads on Google’s Display Network.

Our standard list of Aussie newspaper sites follows – feel free to add any others in the comments below. news.com.au in particular often gets very poor results & is usually worth excluding:

theage.com.au
smh.com.au
theaustralian.com.au
news.com.au
heraldsun.com.au
theherald.com.au
couriermail.com.au
adelaidenow.com.au
perthnow.com.au
dailytelegraph.com.au

You can get our funky new WordPress Plugin – WPremarketing – here.

You’ll need to know a little ‘widget logic’ but examples are provided on the plugin page once you upload the zip file to WordPress

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Step by Step guide to setting up remarketing – ensure before you start that the strategy is known. It’s the strategy that will make or break a remarketing campaign.

Ensure the audiences tab is displayed (just makes life easier)

click audiences tab

then ‘add audiences’

ignore the campaign/adgroup section (for now) & click ‘create & manage lists

add a new remarketing list

give the new list a sensible name & set the membership duration. click save

the ‘tag’ is the code snippet you need to add to the web pages (you may need to refresh the screen to see this)

copy & paste the code snippet into a text file & send this to the web master. The strategy will determine which pages this needs to be added to.

next, you’ll create the campaign to target that remarketing list & actually show the ads

give the new campaign a sensible name (probably containing the word remarketing!)

Set the location to a wider area than normal. If you usually target a state, target the whole country. If you normally target a country, target ‘all countries’. This gives the campaign more room to work

set networks to Display Network & choose the ‘entire network’ option

If you like, turn off smartphones – typically iPad traffic will convert at a similar rate to desktops, so leave that enabled

start by bidding CPC & set your budget

save

next, add an AdGroup

don’t enter any keywords – this would limit the available impressions too much

set your adgroup bids – the display network bid will be the default for your remarketing ads (since they shown on the GDN)

you’ll need to add Ads – however it’s far easier to do this separately in AdWords Editor

Next, you’ll need to tell the remarketing campaign which audiences to show ads to. Click the Audiences tab

find the appropriate list & click add – more advanced strategies can make use of custom combinations of lists. Click Save – you’re done.

See if AdWords will work for you…

* Would you trust the information presented in this article?
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* Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
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* Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
* Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
* Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
* Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
* How much quality control is done on content?
* Does the article describe both sides of a story?
* Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
* Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
* Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
* For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
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* Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
* Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
* Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
* Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
* Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
* Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
* Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
* Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

More photos at www.websavvy.com.au/chiara

She’s wonderful

Is your website ready for remarketing?