Google Updates Content & Placement Targeting

[cactus_jeanl]

I saw this new feature and it looks like it's being rolled out across all accounts today. If you weren't aware, in the past you had to create a separate type of campaign when you wanted to placement target specific sites in the content network. This update wipes that out and you can combine regular content network and placement targeting in one campaign.

None of this effects advertising on Google itself and their search network. It only applies if you target their content network or specific placements on the content network.

You can read Google's help file: Google AdWords Help Center
And their official blog post:
Inside AdWords: Use keywords and placements together on the content network

I think the most interesting new feature of this is from the section below. Looks like we'll be able to better target on the content network:

How do placements and keywords work together? Here are two key points to remember.

Step 1: Keywords always do their work first. When an ad group has keywords, the AdWords system always starts by looking through every possible page in the Google content network to find content that matches those keywords. This happens automatically.

Step 2: Depends on you. What happens next depends on a choice you make in your campaign settings. You can make your ads eligible to show on placements across the content network (using contextual targeting), or you can choose to have your ads appear only on placements you select (using placement targeting). You'll see these choices in the Networks and Bidding section of your campaign settings page, titled 'Relevant pages across the entire network' and 'Relevant pages only on the placements I target.'

If you select 'Relevant pages across the entire network': Keyword matches alone will determine where your ads are eligible to show. You can still target placements, but their only purpose will be to raise or lower your bid when keyword matching puts your ad on one of those placements.

If you select 'Relevant pages only on the placements I target': Your ads can appear only on your chosen placements, and only when those placements also match your keywords. You'll be choosing the set of placements where your ad can show, but contextual targeting (along with the AdWords auction) will determine where your ad will show within that set of placements.

Let's break that down some more. If you set up a content network campaign and find that site X converts really well for you through that campaign, you can add site X as a placement and double your bid just for that site. You won't need to create a new placement campaign to do that anymore.

Alternately, if you want to target site Y, but it contains some content that's not relevant to your business, you can add keywords to the campaign and your ads will only show on pages within site Y that are relevant to those keywords.

Neat, huh?