Lately, I’ve been experimenting a lot with image ad placement campaigns in the content network. I like image campaigns for a couple reasons:

  • Image ads of course are more eye catching than text ads
  • Using image ads with placement targeting can be very effective
  • You can dominate an entire ad region with an image ad
  • There is less competition for certain verticals in the content network
  • They’re quick & easy to setup
  • Google’s quality score works differently than search, making direct linking to the offer a much more viable solution.
  • And if you’re lucky enough, the creatives have already been made by the advertiser
    * (the caveat of course is that not all ad formats are available, hence the reason I am writing this post)

Last night though, I had to shoot off an email to my main affiliate networks with a request that I think all affiliates can agree is lacking in the industry. We need compliant creatives in the networks supporting all the available Google image formats!

I came to this realization last night as I was working on a new image campaign, had everything setup, chose my target sites, etc…only to find that the advertiser didn’t have a single image creative that was supported by Google. Arrggh! That prompted the following email:

To my fellow AMs…

This might be useful to your advertisers who want to get more affiliates promoting image creatives in the Google Content Network.

https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=imagesamples.html

These are image ad formats that Google accepts, and the images have to be less than 50KB.

Grabbing the creatives and running them with placement targeted campaigns is much quicker and easier than keyword targeted campaigns, plus often with less competition. Good potential if targeted properly.

I for one would jump on offers that had image ad creatives that supported all the Google image ad formats. Hopefully more advertisers will start creating Google compliant ad creatives to not miss the huge opportunity in the Content Network.

Thanks in advance.
-Wes

While working with one offer in particular, the timeliness in getting the campaign live was obstructed due to the fact that I had to resize all the image creatives to be less than 50KB. To do so, I had to convert the provide images (which were in .gif format) to .jpg files,  which reduced the file size below Google’s 50KB limit.

Some of the image creatives though were animated gifs, so once I converted them to .jpg, I lost the animated features of the image. We can use animated gifs in the content network, so long as they’re under the 50KB size limitation.

CX Digital quickly came through, and their graphics design team is hard at work, creating all the image creatives I asked for. (Thank you Jessica!).

Perhaps if we can get more affiliates putting pressure on the network to provide the Google compliant creatives, we can create much more opportunity in the content network for all of us. If you agree, have your affiliate manager read this post for the “affiliate perspective”.

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Filed under: Adwords Content Network • Affiliate Networks • CPA Offers

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