Internet Marketing

Google recently announced a major update to their display URL policy in AdSense ads in an effort to further incorporate landing page quality to their bid and CTR algorithm which determines what position your ad appears and how relevant the keyword that you are buying is to your landing page.

What do I need to know about the updated display URL policy?

Based on feedback from both our advertisers and users, and consistent with our efforts to present relevant results, we’ll no longer allow certain exceptions to our display URL policy. These include, but aren’t limited to, redirects and vanity URLs. In line with our existing policy, we’ll continue to require that your ad’s display URL matches its destination URL (the URL of your landing page). This policy will be strictly enforced for new ads, regardless of previous exceptions. For more details about the current display URL policy, please visit https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=47173

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Here are some other important aspects of the policy you may want to keep in mind:

Tracking URLs - Your ads will be approved if the URL of your landing page domain matches that of your display URL domain.

For example, the following would be acceptable:
• Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
• Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
• Landing page URL: www.google.com

However, this example would be unacceptable:
• Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
• Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
• Landing page URL: www.trackingurl.com

Sub-Domains

The use of sub-domains and additional text within the display will continue to be acceptable, provided the top-level domain matches the URL of your landing page.
For example, the display URLs below would be acceptable for the landing page URL of http://sub.google.com/miscellaneous, as the top-level domains match:
• sub.google.com
• google.com/extratext
• www.google.com/extratext

Quality Score

Note that changing your display URL may affect your ad’s Quality Score and ad position.

Keyword URLs

Keyword URLs are considered your destination URL (the URL of your landing page); your ad’s display URL must match its destination URL.

Next Steps

While no immediate action will be taken on existing ads, we encourage you to make the necessary changes to all ads within your account. This will ensure that your ads run without being disrupted by future disapprovals related to this policy enforcement. Visit https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6272 for step-by-step instructions for editing your display URL.

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I got an email from one of my buddies in the industy asking how to calculate how much they can afford to pay on a CPM for ads outside PPC using the performance data from advertising on PPC content. Here are some fictious numbers he sent over for the example:

PPC Content Stats:
488,000 Impressions
350 Clicks
18 Conversions
$95.00 Ad Cost
5.6% Click Thru Rate

Ad Cost / Impressions = 1.946
1.946 * 1000 = 0.19 CPM

Does this mean we pay roughly $0.19 CPM?

The only missing piece to this equation is the CPA that they are willing to pay for each conversion. Using these numbers they are currently getting a $5.20 CPA on content ads. If they were able to pay $20 CPA then they should effectively be able to buy CPM traffic on a network like AdBrite for around 0.80 - $1.00 depending on the quality of the placement. I would just use this as a gauge and not be afraid to test out networks like DrivePM, MSN DR, Yahoo Class 2 and Advertising.com. Sometimes you’d be surprised running wider reach categories that your ad might perform in areas that you would of never thought of like Maps, Web Mail and IM messenger placements.

If you want to effectively test display banners you should have a budget of about $10k and should A/B test several ad sizes like 728×90 leaderboards, 300×250 square box ads and 160×600 skyscraper units. I have seen different sizes perform better for different types of businesses. You’ll want to get at least 1M impressions on each banner to get good enough conversion and CTR performance results.

Oh yeah, BTW “eCPM” = effective CPM for you acronym junkies.

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