Question about Google Adwords and Content Network Please Help! Will give 10pts to best answer?

Recently I have had the default selections for my worldwide adwords campaign (English only). I mean that I am targeting every country offered with Google.. I owe around $1,000-1,500 a day and receive a lot of clicks from my content network. However, I am fearful that most of my business comes from the actual search network with Google's engine and due to either the relevency of content and where it is displayed or the fact that people probably aren't looking directly for my service where they may find it (on random adsense pages) that I am wasting money/clicks with leaving the content network enabled.





Cliff note question:


Is google adwords content network good enough for a click all the way through a sale consistently enough for me to continue using it or should I just stick to the search network? All answers appreciated

Question about Google Adwords and Content Network Please Help! Will give 10pts to best answer?
I asked myself the same question. Thinking that search was the way to go. So first I ran search network only for two weeks then I switched to both content and search. I found that my sales as a percentage of clicks was actually better with the content network enabled. And the clicks were cheaper. After I thought about it for a while, I came to this conclusion: People who are actively searching for a product, are probably going to search several sites to compare, It is unlikely that they will just click an ad, and make a purchase, these days it is so easy to shop around. Whereas on the content network, you may get more impulse buyers, they see the ad, it gets their attention, and they buy. I am sure the results will be different for everybody, depending on what they are selling. I would think the more common the item you are selling the worse it will perform on search, but a more obscure product would do much better. It would be pretty easy to opt out of content for a while and compare your sales per click. I would be curious to see how it works for you.
Reply:Can you measure from click to sale? Can you actually KNOW which clicks generate sales, and which do not? If not, then stop advertising on the content network (and perhaps all AdWords).





I've run very profitable campaigns on the Content Network, and I've even found some campaigns which can't draw profitable traffic from search but which can draw profitable traffic from the content network. In every case, it's vital that you bid separately for Content traffic, because it's almost never worth the same per-click rate as Search traffic.





There are several very specific strategies to optimize a Content Network campaign, including careful use of the Site Exclusion Tool, and narrow Ad Groups with very few keywords per group.





It is extremely unusual to have a successful campaign that includes non-English-speaking countries, even if you target only browsers with English designated as the primary language. Obviously, it depends on your site, your offer, and your specific goals and how you measure results.





Without proper metrics, you cannot know which keywords are profitable and which are not; nor can you know which placements (content sites) are working and which are not.





If you are spending $1,000 per day on AdWords but don't understand how it works or how to measure it, you should absolutely, positively seek out expert help.





As an example of how expert advice can help you: two years ago I was hired by a client who was spending $20,000 per month to drive $10,000 in monthly revenue. After fewer than 20 hours of work, I "inverted" the campaign so that the client was spending only $10,000 per month to drive $20,000 in monthly revenue. (This still left a huge amount of optimization work left to do, but it shifted the campaign from a huge monthly LOSS to a nominal profit, which meant that work could continue.) Of course, that was an extreme and unusual situation -- but if you're spending $30,000 per month, then it makes sense to spend a few thousand dollars for expert advice if it will improve your results or reduce your costs by that much.





Be careful when hiring a consultant. I strongly recommend against hiring any company that charges you based on a "percentage of spend," because that's a perverse incentive (the more they spend, the more they earn). Instead, you should seek out either competent "hourly" or "project-based" consultants, or try to find someone who will work based on your increased profits only (that's very rare to find).





Many folks will recommend that you work only with a certified "Google AdWords Professional," but keep in mind that that's mostly a "marketing designation" and many consultants (me included) have never bothered to pay for certification.