AdWords Tips: Separate Your ‘Content’ & ‘Search’ Campaigns

Whenever you go into Google AdWords and set up a new campaign, by default it is set to appear both in search results & on the Google Content Network (pages running adsense ads). There are two problems with that:

Problem 1. Searchers & Page Viewers Have Different Motives

A searcher is actively looking for your product / service. Whereas someone viewing a webpage with AdSense ads on is probably not actively looking to buy from you. Obviously there are situations where these require slightly different ads, different keyword triggers & different landing pages. Just as there’s a difference between cold-calling someone at home, or having them call you requesting information.

Problem 2. It Makes Tracking & Optimisation 10x Harder

Because of the above difference, ads on the ‘Content’ and ‘Search’ networks perform very differently…

• Content Network (Adsense) ads get a huge amount of impressions & not many clicks & this is not much to worry about
• Search Network ads can sink-or-swim based on their CTR (click-through rate), so you need to keep an eye on the clicks:impressions

If your ‘Search’ & ‘Content’ campaigns are one and the same, it’s much more difficult to quickly see how you’re doing in either one of those & which ads/keywords are working. So let’s say you set up a new ad for ‘circus tents’. In the first day it gets 156 impressions & 92 clicks on Google Search properties, and a further 1299 impressions & 6 clicks on the Content Network. Here’s an illustration of this

Unless you separate out your campaigns, taking a quick look at your campaign stats, the third column is what you’ll see. This would give you the idea that you’re getting a 6.7% click-through rate. Yet if you have access to the first column, you can see that the search network is giving you a much, much higher CTR (an unheard of 60%). This is a great piece of information & could lead you to expand on similar keywords, lower your bids, save some money & drive greater results. All of which would not be possible without that segmented info.

A Simple Analogy

Here’s an analogy that perhaps explains this better: You’re the coach for a track team & you’re monitoring daily performance by looking at the average finish time across all races. The problem is, you’ve lumped in 100m runners & marathoners together. All you see is that June 1st, your team averaged 56-minute finished & on July 1st they averaged 55.4-minute finishes. Do you need to spend more time training your marathoners, or your sprinters? Unless you segment those figures properly you just don’t know: To see whether each of those groups is really progressing, you need to view the results of each individually.