Content Network Catastrophe

I love bad reality TV. I’ve sat through a season of Tool Academy on VH1. I watch Shear Genius on Bravo. I even suffered through the first half of Pirate Master. But now a new reality show threatens contextual networks everywhere: RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Remember, content networks work by looking at the words on a page and trying to match those up against the terms on which you bid in Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and all the rest of the paid search engines. Do you see where I’m going with this?

RuPaul’s Drag Race brings up mismatched ads

Yup. RuPaul’s Drag Race is triggering terms that relate to racing and automotive in the advertising block at the bottom of the page. Thanks, Yahoo!.

Unfortunately, it is hard to identify on what sites you appear if you opt into Yahoo!’s Content Match network. In all honesty, I tend to not use it for that very reason.

Google’s Content Network gives you more control, but can deliver results that are equally as crazy if you are not a diligent advertiser. Running Placement Reports, however, may provide insight on which sites your ads appear. Take some time every week or once a month and run this report. Look for sites that spend a lot of money with little conversions in return and eliminate them. Spend an hour to visit sites you’ve never even heard of and see if the content is truly relevant to your business.

Looking at the placement reports and taking the time to manage your content network separately from your search campaigns makes the difference between an underperforming content campaign and a content campaign earns you money.

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