Content Ads Guide

AdSense have added the ability to use multiple custom channels on the one ad unit. you’ll be able to add up to 5 custom channels to a specific instance of ad code.
I this could be an useful option for some publishers who are really into tracking their statistics. It’s a hard job to some publishers to update all their ads code for some big websites. But I think it could be useful to track at the same time the ad format and the section of the website were the ad is. The example AdSense use to explain it is probably the best:

“What’s the benefit of tracking with more than one custom channel? Well, multiple channels can be very useful when you want to track one ad unit across several different metrics simultaneously. For example, let’s say you run a sports website and you’ve placed a leaderboard at the top and bottom of every page. To track the performance of the ad placement, you’ve created two custom channels — ‘TopLeaderboard’ and ‘BottomLeaderboard’ — and regenerated your ad code appropriately.

But what if you also want to compare your football pages and your baseball pages at the same time? With multiple custom channels, this isn’t a problem. Just create two new custom channels called ‘FootballPages’ and ‘BaseballPages’, and add them to the appropriate ad units. Now your leaderboards will each be tagged with two custom channels that let you know which position they’re in (top or bottom), and the type of page on which they appear (football or baseball).”

The majority of AdSense publishers will never use this, but that a small number of publishers are busily adding multiple custom channels to their sites in the next days. But you have to keep in mind that ad units tagged with multiple custom channels will log impressions or clicks in each channel. As a result, you’ll see a higher number of impressions and clicks when you view your channel reports than when you view your aggregate reports.

Microsoft’s® recently released advertising platform, adCenter, gives pay-per-click advertisers yet another powerful avenue to penetrate the vast Internet marketplace with greater accuracy than ever before.

But is it strong enough to dethrone Google™ AdWords as the king of on-line advertising?

It’s a loaded question. Answers definitely depend on an advertiser’s specific demographics, target audiences and PPC strategy. But based on reach, functionality and cost, it’s already clear, adCenter will be hard for any advertiser to ignore. Since adCenter is new and still very much “in development,” to pass judgment would be premature. It already claims superiority over AdWords and Yahoo!® Search Marketing in targeting and analytics. Both of these features are a natural outgrowth of MSN’s potent database. Targeting. Since MSN® stores accurate and detailed demographic information about its audience - obtained from subscriptions and registrations on its various Web sites - PPC advertisers can zero-in on highly qualified prospects. Targeting options are:

Geographic location; Gender; and/or Day part or day of the week.

Efficient targeting leads directly to more sales-per-ad-dollar spent. According to recent statistics, adCenter converts clicks to customers at a substantially higher rate than AdWords or Yahoo!®. Higher conversion rates stretch ad dollars because less money is wasted on click-throughs from unqualified traffic.

Analytics. Again, data sets adCenter apart. Because MSN® has so much of it, they can churn out reports and analysis to help advertisers evaluate and fine-tune PPC campaigns. Analytic tools include:

AdTracker, a system that measures ad effectiveness; Conversion tracking; Customizable campaign reports with a wide variety of sort options; Invalid click identification; and Ad, keyword, budget and Web site optimization.

These tools make it easy to achieve outstanding PPC results, in theory. Currently, feedback from advertisers and search marketers is mixed. Some complain that adCenter tools are counterintuitive, buggy and overly complex. For search engine marketing firms often managing hundreds of client campaigns, these drawbacks can make adCenter an inefficient and frustrating platform. But Microsoft® hardly is standing still. In May, the company acquired DeepMatrix, a site-traffic measurement and analytics firm. When DeepMatrix is integrated fully by late 2007, Microsoft® expects better performance from existing reports and a host of new ones.

Time will tell whether Microsoft® can get ahead in the on-line advertising race. But whatever the outcome, the good news is advertisers can look forward to stronger PPC options and better return-on-investment in marketing.

About the Author
Aaron Wittersheim is president of Whoast Inc., a suburban Chicago search-marketing firm. For more information, visit http://www.whoast.com

Microsoft adCenter Content Ads is a new advertising solution that allows advertisers to place content targeted advertisements on select MSN channels, also known as contextual advertising. Content Ads is currently in an invitation-only pilot for U.S. based advertisers. To be considered to participate in the pilot, you can register for an invitation if you already are a current adCenter customer. Learn more about the pilot here.

Contextual advertising is one of the fastest growing online marketing methods. As consumers continue to do more of their shopping online we can expect more merchants to compete for their attention. This means that this advertising method is likely to continue to gain strength as a major method of advertising. The targeted and direct nature make it a very popular choice with merchants who are looking to squeeze the most value out of their marketing dollars. Never before has internet marketing been able to achieve this level of directness and consumer focus.

Who can use contextual advertising on their website? Any one with a website and some content. Content means not links or pictures but real word content. You need content on that website. You need to display ads. But you also need traffic likely to click those ads. There are several companies out there that offer contextual advertising programs. The number of contextual advertising programs is still increasing. Some of the big ones include Yahoo and Google. Although Yahoo contextual advertising is currently only open to US publishers. The Google program is the most used world wide. Microsoft arrived later but it could play an important role in this market.

Many websites that contain contextual advertising are hobbyist web sites that were not created for commercial reasons. Hosting contextual ads allows the web master to recoup his or her expenses and perhaps even make a profit from the web site. It also allows web masters to migrate from subscription based sites to free web sites.

How does it work? The concept is really simple, if you think about it. The publisher or the webmaster inserts a java script into a certain website. Each time the page is accessed, the java script will pull advertisements from the Contextual program. The ads that are targeted should therefore be related to the content that is contained on the web page serving the ad. If a visitor clicks on an advertisement, the webmaster serving the ad earns a portion of the money that the advertiser is paying the search engine for the click. Webmasters are given the chance to choose from many different types of text ad formats to better complement their website and fit their webpage layout. This programs are all about targeted content, the more targeted your content is, the more target the search engines’ ads will be. There are some web masters and publishers who are focused more on their site contents and how best to maintain them rather than the cash that the ads will generate for them. This is the part where the effectiveness is working its best. One thing publishers must be aware is that is not as simple as placing the ads on the web site pages. This is a common misconception amongst internet marketers that can cause frustration and ultimately lead too many quitting with no success. There is actually work and strategic planning involved with you making money with Contextual Programs. There are not much secrets. You can learn from lots of articles on the internet or blogs and experimenting on your website. There are a lot of methods available to anyone who wants to use contextual advertising as part of their home business strategy.