This is part two of the series, "5 things that make Google Display Network work." In the previous blog, I made an attempt to portray the reach and depth of our ad network.
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One of the eternal concerns with ad networks is "where does my ad appear--God only knows!" And it will always be true for those campaigns that do not put any controls in place. Lets take a quick look at how you target your ads on the Google Display Network. You either target your ads by context, or you target by audience behavior. Each targeting method provides further technologies by which you can place your ads on the web.
Lets deep dive into one of the older targeting technologies, Keyword Contextual Targeting. Based on your product or service that you are promoting, you choose certain keywords against which you want to find an audience on the web. So if you are promoting running shoes, you select keyword groups like "running," "marathon," "addidas," "reebok," "Newton," "stretching exercises," etc. When your target audience browses the web and is reading/watching this kind of content, the ad technology serves up your ad alongside relevant content. This is the way it works most times. But there are a couple of situations that can spill your ads out of control. Lets discuss the first one. Even when you select relevant keywords, the contexts can be varied. In the above example, you want to target marathon beginners, who are avidly consuming all sorts of content related to marathon and running. You use Contextual Targeting Tool, one of Google's keyword tools to generate lists of keywords that are related to running like above. One of the keywords that the tool generates is "Battle of Marathon." This context is all about an event in history that took place in 490 BC, and has nothing to do with running. If you ran your campaign without bothering to check the context, your ads then start appearing on pages that are related to the battle of marathon. By far, in my experience, this is the most difficult aspect of keyword contextual targeting where you have to work that much hard to be aware of the different contexts your keyword groups can trigger out there on the web. Of course there are ways to block these unwanted contexts through a technology called 'Negative Keywords' or 'Keyword Exclusion."
The other source of dilution of targeting is that contextual targeting places the onus of selecting the context in your hands. It serves your ad based on keywords you select. The more aligned your keywords are to your business, the more relevant your context is. However, in order to scale your reach, sometimes you also select popular themes on the web. It is under these circumstances, that we see all kinds of ads being served alongside all kinds of content. So, how do you achieve scale but also enforce filters that will ensure your ads don't appear on the wrong kind of content. The Google Display Network provides two compelling tools that help preserve your brand safety. These two tools help you keep your ads out at different levels, from negative keywords to negative topics and negative audiences. Lets take a look.
Negative Keywords: as mentioned above in the example of 'battle of marathon,' exclude all those keyword themes that sound similar to your product but relate to completely different contexts by adding them as negatives.
Another far safer exclusion tool is at the campaign level. Google Display Network provides some hard coded filters like 'profanity,' 'disaster,' 'forums,' etc which ensure your ad doesn't appear on random web content. For the really brand conscious, I've seen some of them in my media experience, there are further controls like 'non-adplanner 1000' that shows your ad only on the top 1000 websites in the world. This is typically good for US-targeted campaigns as the top 1000 websites usually cater to the western audience.
With newer ad targeting technologies like behavioral targeting or audience buying, you can still exclude whole audiences that you think overlap with your target audience. For example, lets see, if you are targeting audiences that are sports lovers but you do not want to target golf enthusiasts, you can specifically exclude that genre of audience.
When you carefully and intelligently apply these filters, your ads work very effectively on ad networks like Google Display Network. And with transparent reporting, not just god, even you can know exactly where and when your ad appeared across the web.
I will cover the following areas in my next blogs.
3. Targeting by Context & by Audience Interests 4. Creative flexibility through 3PAS
5. Transparent Reporting
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One of the eternal concerns with ad networks is "where does my ad appear--God only knows!" And it will always be true for those campaigns that do not put any controls in place. Lets take a quick look at how you target your ads on the Google Display Network. You either target your ads by context, or you target by audience behavior. Each targeting method provides further technologies by which you can place your ads on the web.
Lets deep dive into one of the older targeting technologies, Keyword Contextual Targeting. Based on your product or service that you are promoting, you choose certain keywords against which you want to find an audience on the web. So if you are promoting running shoes, you select keyword groups like "running," "marathon," "addidas," "reebok," "Newton," "stretching exercises," etc. When your target audience browses the web and is reading/watching this kind of content, the ad technology serves up your ad alongside relevant content. This is the way it works most times. But there are a couple of situations that can spill your ads out of control. Lets discuss the first one. Even when you select relevant keywords, the contexts can be varied. In the above example, you want to target marathon beginners, who are avidly consuming all sorts of content related to marathon and running. You use Contextual Targeting Tool, one of Google's keyword tools to generate lists of keywords that are related to running like above. One of the keywords that the tool generates is "Battle of Marathon." This context is all about an event in history that took place in 490 BC, and has nothing to do with running. If you ran your campaign without bothering to check the context, your ads then start appearing on pages that are related to the battle of marathon. By far, in my experience, this is the most difficult aspect of keyword contextual targeting where you have to work that much hard to be aware of the different contexts your keyword groups can trigger out there on the web. Of course there are ways to block these unwanted contexts through a technology called 'Negative Keywords' or 'Keyword Exclusion."
The other source of dilution of targeting is that contextual targeting places the onus of selecting the context in your hands. It serves your ad based on keywords you select. The more aligned your keywords are to your business, the more relevant your context is. However, in order to scale your reach, sometimes you also select popular themes on the web. It is under these circumstances, that we see all kinds of ads being served alongside all kinds of content. So, how do you achieve scale but also enforce filters that will ensure your ads don't appear on the wrong kind of content. The Google Display Network provides two compelling tools that help preserve your brand safety. These two tools help you keep your ads out at different levels, from negative keywords to negative topics and negative audiences. Lets take a look.
Negative Keywords: as mentioned above in the example of 'battle of marathon,' exclude all those keyword themes that sound similar to your product but relate to completely different contexts by adding them as negatives.
Another far safer exclusion tool is at the campaign level. Google Display Network provides some hard coded filters like 'profanity,' 'disaster,' 'forums,' etc which ensure your ad doesn't appear on random web content. For the really brand conscious, I've seen some of them in my media experience, there are further controls like 'non-adplanner 1000' that shows your ad only on the top 1000 websites in the world. This is typically good for US-targeted campaigns as the top 1000 websites usually cater to the western audience.
With newer ad targeting technologies like behavioral targeting or audience buying, you can still exclude whole audiences that you think overlap with your target audience. For example, lets see, if you are targeting audiences that are sports lovers but you do not want to target golf enthusiasts, you can specifically exclude that genre of audience.
When you carefully and intelligently apply these filters, your ads work very effectively on ad networks like Google Display Network. And with transparent reporting, not just god, even you can know exactly where and when your ad appeared across the web.
I will cover the following areas in my next blogs.
3. Targeting by Context & by Audience Interests 4. Creative flexibility through 3PAS
5. Transparent Reporting
