Does Content Convert Just as Good or Better Than Search?

April 22, 2009 by Pablo Palatnik

One aspect of creating a search campaign is deciding what budget you will apply to the content network and if you will even opt in to have you ads show in the content network. I think every search marketer has had the experience of bidding on a keyword in the content network and has gotten KILLED with clicks, and most likely it could have very well been fraud, at least I think that happened with Yahoo once from my past experience.

Do I think the content network converts just as good as search does? Probably not. Google just released a white paper that is really interesting and definitely worth a read if you’re running campaigns on Adwords. I can strongly recommend not to run ads on the Yahoo content network but the Google content network is a different beast of its own.

“…Our findings, captured in the white paper, CPA Performance Trends On the Google Content Network, show that ads on the Content Network are likely to be as cost-effective as ads on the search network. In fact, we found that the median advertiser showing their ads on both the search and content networks has a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) that’s about 2% lower on the Content Network than on search pages, with the Content Network driving close to 20% of their total conversions.”

This white paper presents the findings from this analysis. It shows that advertisers who advertise on the content network see good results on a number of levels:

1. Ads on the Google Content Network are likely to be as cost-effective – or even more cost-effective – than ads on the search network.
* The median advertiser has a content CPA that’s about 2% lower than their search CPA.

2. The Content Network drives a significant share of total conversions.
* The Content Network drives nearly 20% of total conversions for the median advertiser.

3. Conversion rates are higher for advertisers who used either of two AdWords campaign management controls: the Conversion Optimizer and site exclusion.

Download: CPA Performance Trends on the Google Content Network