Content Matching - Different Game, Different Rules

Posted by dave@interactivelimited.com on February 22, 2008

In Search Engine Watch, on Dec 3rd, 2007, David Szetela wrote a fantastic article on a topic I rarely see talked about for SEM: “How Google, Yahoo Content Ad Matching Really Works.” Not only does content matching work, but it can also help you find great partner sites to advertise on.

Here are the highlights:

  1. Run your content campaigns separately from your search campaigns.
  2. Separate content campaigns into small ad groups, each with ideally 20 to 40 keywords and never more than 50.
  3. Don’t bother using different match types, e.g. phrase and exact match in Google. Match type is ignored by the content matching algorithms.
  4. Don’t bother with separate bid prices for each keyword. These too are ignored, and the search engines operate based on the ad group’s default bid. Use negative keywords to help the algorithms “figure out” sub-categories of content network site pages where your ads should not appear.
  5. Create ads and keyword lists that, taken together, will match a particular theme or category.

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