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Lesson 3b: Placement Targeting
Introduction

Objective: Learn how placement targeting works on ad campaigns.

What is Placement Targeting?

Placement targeting is an alternative to traditional AdWords keyword targeting, but it can also be combined with keyword targeting to allow for a more refined reach to your selected audience. Placement targeting lets advertisers choose individual websites in the Google content network, or specific sections of those sites, where they'd like their ads to appear. Placement targeting gives advertisers the ability to:

  • Advertise on a favorite site or sites
  • Reach customers early in the advertising cycle, with ads designed to increase awareness or to promote a brand
  • Bid using either cost-per-click (CPC) pricing or using an alternate cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) pricing model. (See Pricing and Ranking below for details.)
  • Combine with keyword targeting to define specific content sites where ads with keyword targeting should be shown, and allows for more effective bidding when a keyword match is found on a targeted site. (See the Keywords and Placements Together lesson for more information).

Why Use Placement Targeting?

Creating a campaign with placements only is often a good choice for advertisers who want to promote a brand or a new product to a specific audience. With placements, you can select the exact sites where you want your ads to appear.

Mixing placements with keywords in the same ad group is also a good way to refine content network campaigns. Your keywords determine where on the content network your ads can appear, and your placements can be used to raise your bid for certain placements, or to limit your ads to appearing only on the placements you choose, and only when pages on those placements match your keywords.

If you're not sure if placement targeting is for you, you can create separate campaigns with placements only, or create separate ad groups mixing placements with keywords. Then track your results to see what works best for you.

Learn more about how keywords and placements work together.

Appearance and Location

Campaigns using placement targeting can include text ads and rich ad formats (like image and video ads), and they maintain the same look and feel as standard ads using keyword targeting alone.

However, a placement-targeted ad always fills the entire ad position (space reserved for ads on a page) itself. This means that only one placement-targeted ad appears on a content page. If you run a text ad, the ad would be expanded to its expanded text ad format so it fills the entire position.

To see how ads can be formatted on a content network page, visit our ad format page.

 
 
Starting a Campaign with Placements

Objective: Learn the steps for creating a new campaign by starting with placements where the ads can appear.

Campaign Creation

when you create a new campaign in your AdWords account, you're offered a choice: 'Start with keywords' or 'Start with placements.' Either way, you begin in the same place: on your Campaign Summary page. Sign in to your AdWords account, then click the Campaign Management tab, then click the link titled New online campaign. You'll see a pull-down menu with the 'Start with keywords' and 'Start with placements' options.

The creation process for both choices is similar. But when you start with placements, you'll notice a few differences from starting with keywords:

  • Placements: Instead of creating a list of keywords to trigger your ad, you create a list of websites or related placements where you'd like your ad to appear.

  • Placement Tool: Instead of using the Keyword Tool to find potential keywords to advertise on, you use a Placement Tool to find potential placements where you'd like your ad to appear. You can list exact URLs or use other criteria to generate a list of available placements. This is explained in more detail below.

Choosing Placements

The Placement Tool appears when you create a new campaign or ad group starting with placements, or when you click the Add placements link on the Placements tab of an existing campaign. The Placement Tool helps you select websites and other placements in the content network where you'd like your ad to appear.

The Placement Tool offers four ways to choose placements:

  • Browse categories: Shows sites and related placements that match categories (like Entertainment) or subcategories (like Music) that you select. For best results, narrow the topic by picking subcategories that most precisely match your ad.

  • Describe topics: Shows sites and related placements relevant to words or phrases you enter. For instance, a coffee merchant might enter topics like organic coffee beans, coffee, or coffee products. We'll then display a list of sites relating to the topics entered.

  • List URLs: Shows placements that exactly match, or are related to, URLs you enter. For example, if you're advertising tennis equipment, you might enter the URLs of your favorite tennis or sports websites. If the sites you enter are part of the Google content network, we'll display those sites as available for targeting. If not, we'll display a list of related sites that may have a similar audience. Then you can pick the placements where you'd like your ad to appear.

  • Select demographics: Shows sites and related placements popular with the audience demographics you select. For example, you might choose an audience age range of ages 35-44. We'll display placements likely to target that audience.
For each of the above methods, you can generate up to 100 content placements that match your criteria. Each placement includes an estimate of the Max. Impressions/Day — the number of impressions available to all advertisers on the URL in an average day.

Click Add next to placements where you'd like your ad to appear. Placements you select move to the Selected Placements list on the right-side of the page. Click the Add Selected Placements button to save them to your ad group.

To match your ad to the most relevant placements, we recommend that you use all four methods above.

 
 
Pricing and Ranking

Objective: Understand how cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) pricing works and how CPM ads compete with CPC ads.

CPM Pricing

The content network lets you bid for ad space in either of two ways: with the classic cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, or with cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) pricing.

With CPM pricing, you set the maximum price you're willing to pay for every 1000 impressions, or views, your ad receives on a given site. This means that you're charged whenever your ad appears, whether a user clicks it or not.

As it does with keyword-targeted ads on the search network, AdWords automatically lowers the actual CPM to the minimum price needed to win the auction in a given position on the content network. In many cases, advertisers pay a price lower than their CPM bid.

CPM pricing can be used with keywords or with placements. CPM pricing is available only for campaigns that target the content network. It can't be used in campaigns that target the search network.

Ranking

When an ad with CPC pricing and an ad with CPM pricing enter the same auction, AdWords uses a system of effective CPM, or eCPM, to compare and rank the ads.

For ads with CPC bidding, the AdWords system considers the ad's bid, clickthrough rate (CTR), and other relevance factors, all taken across 1000 impressions. The resulting figure is the ad's eCPM, or effective cost per thousand impressions.

For any available ad position, the eCPMs of ads with CPC pricing are compared to each other and to the bids of any eligible ads with CPM bidding. The highest-ranking ad wins the position and is displayed to the user. An image ad must outrank the eCPM of the top four keyword-targeted text ads in order to win the space.

No matter which type of ad wins the position, the AdWords Discounter monitors the competition and ensures that the winning ad is charged only what is necessary to maintain its ranking above the next highest ad.

To learn more about the AdWords Discounter, visit the Cost Control lesson.