BUSINESS, MARKETING, and MONEY

I've said it before and I'll say it again, avoid the Content Network. A seasoned Adwords user may use it, but track your ROI closely. I'm willing to bet you aren't getting much. If you are beginner, stay away from the Content Network. Some other marketer will tell you to separate bids for Search and Content, but that just doesn't address the underlying problem.

The reason to avoid the Content Network is the poor quality of traffic. Content Network traffic is traffic from Adsense Publishers. Adsense Publishers are individual websites that have put up Adsense ads and are collecting revenue for every click.

The problem is that Adsense Publishers don't care about the quality of traffic they send. I'm speaking from experience, as I participate in Adsense. The prevailing school of Adsense thought is to make your Adsense ads blend into your content. As a publisher, you don't want visitors to recognize the links as ads. The goal here is to make it look just like a regular link, and not an ad to another website. In other words, you are tricking the consumer. This is a completely valid Adsense tactic and is in wide use. But, consider the visitor who got tricked into clicking the link. How motivated is that visitor? Do you think that confused visitor is likely to provide any ROI?

In addition, all kinds of less than valid tactics have been employed to get Adsense clicks. The most common a few years back was to place graphics over the ads, which makes the links look less like ads and further confuses visitors. Other tactics include make Adsense ads look like navigation links. I'm sure you've seen these that look like navigation tabs or a left navigation menu.

Next you have the Adsense farm or Made for Adsense websites. These are the websites that are nothing but Adsense ads. Here are a few examples...

* best3websites.com
* ToSeekA.com
* seekful.com

Are you seriously going to pay for traffic from these spam websites?

Finally there is the fraud issue. We've all heard of the fraud that occurs with Adsense. I've read that 30% of clicks may be fraudulent, but I have no evidence to support that number. But, I can guarantee that there is some fraud happening. You simply can't avoid it entirely.

Here is a quote from a comment by Michael Martinez on Matt Cutts blog http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/better-click-tracking-with-auto-tagging

"(Click manipulation) technology was well developed before Google even existed. People were using it to manipulate click-through rates for banner ads, Web polls, hit counters, and other click counting services as far back as 1996."

"The more sophisticated operations use networks of servers scattered across multiple NOCs, employing software that spoofs user agents, identifies itself with multiple IP addresses across a wide variety of C-Blocks, and randomizing routines that are intended to simulate users clicking through links and spending anywhere from 3 seconds to several minutes on the pages."

"The technology was employed on the commercial side for the intentional manipulation of DirectHit results, Goto.com paid ads, affiliate programs (such as those operated by Amazon, Commission Junction, ClickBank, etc.) and large banner networks."

"Anything where someone felt they could gain an advantage, make some money, or deprive a competitive of an advantage or the ability to earn money has been targeted by click manipulators."

Just separate search bids from content bids. Every time someone recommends the Content Network, they acknowledge the above problems, but then they say just separate the bids like it is a cure all. That doesn't address the quality issues. The traffic is not going to convert. Sure, you can pay $0.05 per click versus $0.50 per click, but you are still getting low quality. Do you want to throw away even $0.05 per click or would you rather not participate?

Rick Strahl rants about his poor quality traffic on his blog http://west-wind.com/WebLog/posts/302826.aspx

If your advice is to use the Content Network or simply separate the bids, you are going to have to produce the statistical evidence that you are getting an ROI from the Content Network.

Use a placement campaign instead. The alternative to the pure Content Network campaign is the placement campaign. Adwords allows you to hand pick the websites your ads will appear on. You can pick reputable websites that prominently display ads. Reputable websites do not engage in click fraud. You can weed out all of the Made for Adsense websites.

I recommend you just opt out of the content network. If you want Adsense traffic, use a placement campaign. If you simply must use the Content Network, track your ROI and watch it close. Make sure you are getting a return on your investment.