Microsoft Content Ads: Creating Successful Content Campaigns for 2010, Part II (US Only)

Hey everyone. I wanted to follow-up on my Creating Successful Content Campaigns post from earlier this year with a few additional tips on how to make even more use out of adCenter's new Content Ads features released in 2009.

Now that your content campaigns have been up and running for a few weeks/months, this is a great time to make some adjustments to your campaigns that will help them become more competitive and perform even better. Of course you should always be refreshing your campaigns with new KWs, but one new addition to adCenter's reporting options in 2009 can help you fine-tune your content campaigns a step further.

Publisher Performance Report:

In addition to adding new Content Ads targeting options in 2009, we added new reporting to increase the visibility into both the Microsoft Content Network as a whole, as well as allow advertisers to more accurately measure the success of their content campaigns and make changes for the better.

After your content campaigns have been running for a while you should leverage the Publisher Performance Report (PPR) to analyze and update you campaign. This report provides insight into all the key performance indicators for your content campaigns across each of the publishers within the network.

Two great ways you can leverage this data to fine-tune your campaigns and improve performance are:

1.) Website Exclusions

Use the information in the PPR to exclude poor performing websites from your content campaigns. This is the equivalent of utilizing negative KWs in search campaigns to filter out bad clicks. Customize the report to include adCenter's conversion tracking data or review it along side your own conversion data. Identify if traffic from any specific publishers on the network is performing poorly. Then within your content campaign's 'Campaign Settings' or 'Ad Group Settings' add those sites to Website Exclusions list.

This is a quick way to eliminate poor performing traffic/clicks and increase the overall ROI of your campaigns.

2.) Site Targeting

You can also leverage this same data to identify Publisher's on the content network that are performing well for you and create ad groups that target those sites exclusively. This allows you to set unique bids for different Publishers on the network. If you find the traffic from a certain publisher converts well for you, take this opportunity to build out a test campaign targeted to that site and bid a bit higher for that traffic.

To build a test Ad Group for Site Targeting, create a new ad group and choose "Networks and websites" as your bid type under Step 1: Ad Group Settings.

Then create your ads and proceed to Step 3: Networks and websites. Click on the "Websites" tab and enter the website(s) you'd like to try targeting from the Placement Performance Report. Click "View available placements" to see if that site is currently available for Site Targeting on adCenter and if so, add it to your "Selected placements" list. Complete the remainder of the setup wizard and you're finished.

Important Note: As I mentioned in Part I of this post, although site targeted ad groups are available in adCenter, not all publishers are currently participating in this feature. Some sites on the Microsoft Publisher Network may not be available for Site Targeting.

Like with any Search Campaign, top performance in Content Advertising Campaigns comes from performing regular campaign maintenance and updates. Take some time today to revisit your content campaign's performance with the Publisher Performance Report. Exclude any poor converting sites from your campaigns and review your options for building out additional test ad groups targeted to top performing sites. Also, don't forget to update your core Content campaigns with top trending KWs in your industry to get the most exposure possible.