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Google to Let Advertisers Target Sites – Adwords Site Targeted Ads

Posted By Darren Rowse 25th of April 2005 Adsense 0 Comments

Google is beta testing a new feature for AdWords that will allow advertisers to choose which sites their ads will appear on – Site-Targeted Ads. They explain the program with the following statements:

‘Since Google first introduced AdWords, advertisers have asked us for the ability to run their ads on specific websites. Site targeting gives our users that ability, while also allowing their ads to compete for ranking with traditional keyword-targeted AdWords ads. It’s one more tool that AdWords advertisers can use to bring their message to highly-targeted groups of web users.

Site targeting isn’t available yet. We’re currently running a beta test of site-targeted campaigns with just a few advertisers. We expect to make site targeting available to all AdWords advertisers in the near future.’

So for instance if you wanted to specifically expose your blogging related product (or blog) on my blog here at ProBlogger you could specify that as an advertiser and ensure it only appears here. Advertisers will be charged on a CPM basis (per 1000 impressions at a minimum of $2 per 1000 – and not a CPC basis. Also animated banner ads look like they’ll become available to all Adwords Advertisers and not just some.

How will this impact publishers?

I guess this is yet to be seen and will vary from site to site – however if you have a quality site that is in high demand by advertisers wanting to get their ads seen on it you should see an increase in your click value. It could be a dream come true for some higher profile sites who have advertisers engage in something of a bidding war over them.

Sounds good – however the New York Times which has an an article on Site-Targeted Ads writes:

‘Google will abandon rules that require advertisements to be directly relevant to the pages on which they appear; it will now place a motor oil ad on a wine site if the refiner outbids the cheesemonger.’

If this is true then publishers should be a little concerned as it means you could end up with some pretty non relevant ads appearing on your site. Of course the non relevant ads might pay more than your other ads (the highest bids appear) – however non relevant ads get clicked on a lot less than relevant ads. It will be interesting to see how this works itself out.

Jensense sums up the changes by saying it’ll be good for publishers as well as advertisers – as long as they are good advertisers (with good content). She writes:

‘Overall, this is a great move for Google to make and should pay off for publishers with solid quality content. However, the effect on publishers with less-than-stellar content could be significant, if advertisers begin monitoring their content conversion rates and begin excluding sites they feel are not up to par.’

Read more on Site-Targeted Ads at:

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. This will help filter out the blogs and websites focused on bogus content.

  2. Ya this will be a good thing for us IMO.

  3. […] e to highly-targeted groups of web users. Lots more to be read at the following… ProBlogger New York Times Jense […]

  4. Good for advertisers with the ability for more control of where ads go, but really bad for the small sites as competitve ad areas may dissappear from their “unknown” site.

    It could help some of the “localized” sites as then advertisers know that their ads are from potential customers, even if they do not have ecommerce abilities.

  5. I agree this will be a good thing for those sites that actually have good content – hopefully something we all strive for. Of course, Google will now have to deal with the spectre of impression fraud…

  6. I’m really looking forward to more details on this. This could be a very nice addition to the adsense program.

  7. Google Beta-Testing Site-Targeted Ads
    Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has an interesting post today about the new site-targeted ads that Google is currently beta-testing. This will obviously be a nice thing for anyone with a high-quality content site that gets a lot of visitors. I

  8. I think it’ll work itself out. If advertisers can force irrelevant ads to appear on a site, the CTR for those ads will drop, & they’ll be marked as low-CTR ads & removed by AdSense. So advertisers will only shoot themselves in the foot if they try to put a motor oil ad on a cooking site.

    Ofc it might annoy webmasters… :)

  9. defintely interesting but maybe it could turn out to be some sort of blog spamming ?

  10. […] dsense publishers about the new changes to their contextual ad system that I’ve been posting about for the past 24 hours […]

  11. […] Google Site Targeted Ads FAQ CNET news on Google new service Search Engine Watch JenSense Problogger Work boxers […]

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