By: Chad Bell
Whether you are managing your own AdWords campaign or someone else’s, you have certainly asked yourself at some point, “to content network, or not to content network?” Well, Google now calls the content network the Display Network, but whatever you choose to call it, it can become a money pit of unfruitful clicks. Google suggests those new to Advertising on AdWords to turn on the Display Network. However, I recommend against that until you are ready to optimize a campaign specifically for it. So, start by focusing on your search network campaign, (for higher quality traffic) and the ad groups under that umbrella before throwing money at the Display Network.

When you have decided to stick your toe into the Display Network ocean, the first thing I suggest is to create a new campaign to explore the Display Network, this will allow you to set a different budget, but also to write different copy for your ads. Once you have launched your Display Network campaign you will want to create a placement report to know what sites your ads are appearing as well as their performance. From this report you can remove sites with high impressions and low click through rate (CTR) or sites with a lot of clicks that are not converting, this is where you can blow your budget if you are not paying close attention. So, with this information you can delete these sites from your campaign and add them as negative sites.

Returning to your placement report, you can now look at sites that are performing well, delete them, and create a separate campaign dedicated only to those pages with high conversions. With a little extra time and effort you can create a highly targeted Display Network campaign and a valuable component of your AdWords Account.