Adwords is constantly changing, and anyone who wants to make money with Adwords needs to keep on top of the new strategies that are always appearing.
In 2007 it was 'kill your competitors' with Day Job Killer and then the many and varied spy systems that tracked your competitors' ads so that you could copy them and blast them out of the water. Some of these systems were on a hugely expensive membership plan.
So there were a lot of advertisers who could not afford those systems or maybe simply did not want to spend all of their time tracking, spying and tweaking in order to cover the cost of their membership. They began to look around for a new direction, and early in 2008 we saw the first hints that marketers were rediscovering something that they had previously considered dead - the content network.
If you are new to Adwords, you may not realize that the content and search networks were once one and the same. Google divided them so that advertisers could have more control in the days when click fraud was prevalent, and most advertisers immediately turned off the content network for their ads.
But times have changed. Click fraud is not the problem that it used to be. Google now closes the accounts of anybody suspected of 'invalid clicks'. This is a problem for site owners because it means that any malicious kid can put them out of business by clicking their ads over and over. But for the Adwords advertiser it means that the content network is usable again.
The content network has several advantages over the search network. First, the cost per click is generally lower. Second, you do not have to fight off the competition in the same way. Third, you have a lot more control - you can specify the exact sites where you want your ad to show.
The last of these points is vitally important. When you are advertising on the content network, always specify target sites for all of your ads. In fact you should go even further and specify the exact pages of the site where you want your ad to appear.
Just as you would with search terms, you need to target pages that are as closely related to your product as possible. For example if you sell garden spades, you will want your ad on a site about gardening but not on the pages that relate to indoor plants.
It is also better to pick out sites that have their Adsense ads 'above the fold' so that people see them as soon as the page is opened, without having to scroll down. Ads in the 'hot' area toward the top left of the screen will usually do best.
By Rosie Cottis
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