SEO Articles

Google’s Content Network just got better!

Author :: William Renedo
Client Services at Mediarun
Date    :: 23rd July 2009

Google’s Content Network just got better with the additions of new tools such as the Google Ad Planner and new possibilities to target consumers on its web based mailing platform Gmail.

The Google AdPlanner although at a beta stage sources its data from TGI, Neilson, GA & Google.com and allows advertisers to define their audience by demographics, sites visited and/or keywords searched. Advertisers can then use these sites to target the Content Network and ensure they reach the users most important to their brand. It also provides advertisers with reach & unique user statistics for their content campaigns. By knowing their consumers demographics Google has given advertisers no excuses to easily target consumers on-line and include display ads to their marketing campaigns. In essence every advertisers dream!




Google have certainly taken it one step further to allow advertisers to target consumers at every point along the purchase path, reaching consumers at earlier parts of the purchase funnel to increase brand and product consideration. Not only has the targeting become much easier on the content network, the management and reporting has also improved by the addition of another tool knows as Performance Placement Reports.


The Performance Placement Report (PPR) gives advertisers clear insight into which sites their ads are appearing on, with performance statistics broken down site by site. This report helps advertisers identify which ads are performing well, as well as those which perform less well or those which are irrelevant, something that is impossible or very hard to identify in other conventional marketing channels such as TV, radio or magazines.

The reach and effectiveness of the Content Network has also been increased by the additions of Gmail advertising and what Google calls AdWords for Errors (AFE).

Gmail advertising allows you to target Gmail users by displaying ads in their accounts, something that has been available for some time on other mail platforms such Hotmail but that is brand new to Google’s content network. Once again Google combines all of its analytical resources to classify Gmail users by their browsing history, your content demographics is then matched to Gmail user interests, this way displaying your ads to the correct audience.

AdWords for Errors (AFE) on the other hand will display your ads when users enter invalid/incorrect searches into the browser address bar (e.g. amason.com rather than amazon.com). AFE sets out to improve the user experience by not only informing the user the domain could not be found but suggest relevant pages related to the possible misspelling of the domain.



In the past many advertisers viewed the content network as a waste of their Adwords budget because it lacked targeting precision and therefore ended up being expensive. It seems now Google has managed to improve this to the degree that it is a must for any advertiser with a considerable Adwords spend.