I highly recommend you check this guy out, download whatever tool he’s giving away and get on his email list. You’ll make more money because of it…trust me. I have.

BTW: His name is Matt Harward, creator of the famed site sniper pro.

Here’s that email I received this morning. Read it…then check out his new ImageAd Builder tool he’s giving away for his birthday. I used the beta version a while back, great tool!

Oh, and Happy Birthday Matt!
_____________________________

Wes,

I’m turning *40* on Thursday.  I don’t know whether that’s the good news… or the bad

I do know that I’m throwing a party, though.

My only problem is that most my friends are IM’ers, like me.  And they’re all over the world.

So, while I’d love to invite you to my place on Thursday for the “offline” party, I’ve got another idea for my online friends.

Before I release my new content network crushing software and strategies for sale, I’m giving it away to you.  But only for the week surrounding my birthday.

Seriously.

I just posted the first release of the software this morning, along with a short tutorial video.  You can download it at:

http://www.imwarfare.com

Then, on Thursday, I’ll give you a strategy guide and show you some cool tricks you can do to get huge traffic and low-cost clicks from Google.

And next Tuesday I’ve got a huge announcement.  I love my birthday… and I’ve really out-done myself this year.  But 40 seems like it should be a big deal… no?

http://www.imwarfare.com

Go get the software right now… it’s my birthday present to you

Wealth and Abundance,

Matt Harward
http://www.mattharward.com
http://www.sitesniperpro.com

P.S.  Since you already know me, I’m actually giving a sneak peek on Thursday (my actual birthday) of what I’ll be unveiling next Tuesday.  Get the content network software and then watch your inbox for more information…

I think you’ll like it.

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• 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”.

• Content Network Domination With ImageAds

1) The adgroup structure for a successful content campaign is very different from search.
2) Keyword matching options in the content network are not used (phrase, exact match have no relevance)
3) Content ads are driven by themes vs search ads that are driven by keyword queries.
4) Keyword insertion (dynamic or static) has no relevance in content ads.
5) Your target audience on the content network is much different (and
much wider) than on search, so therefore a new psychology of ad
writing must be used.

The answer: Separate Content Network Campaigns. Even Google suggests this as the best way to run a successful content campaign: Content Network Optimization Tips.

Ok, so now that we have that out of the way? How else can we optimize our content only campaigns? Well, like search, we must track our performance. This can be done using Google’s performance reports, as well as with a third party tool like Tracking202. (Video Tutorial Coming Soon)

Keep in mind that when tracking performance on the content network, you’ll be tracking adgroups, not keywords. This is a fundamental difference that must not be overlooked. Also, as Google says…you want to focus on conversions, not CTR. A click-thru rate of 0.05% on the content network may seem embarrassingly low compared to search, but performance should be judged based on your conversions and ROI.

Also, once you’ve run a campaign and gathered some data, consider running separate placement targeted campaigns for the sites that are converting for you. You can then custom tailor your bidding and ad writing strategies for these specific sites. A tool I like to use for finding and targeting specific sites in the content network is “Site Sniper Pro” (Free Demo)

You’re tracking reports will also show the sites that have either received lots of clicks or lots of impressions, but without conversions. A word of advice from the start: Turn off social networks, unless that is your target audience. You can now do this from a global setting within your adwords account, or you can manually add the sites as negatives sites in Adwords or with the Adwords Editor.

To turn off social networks, within your Adwords account, click: Campaign Summary > Campaign Name > Site and Category Exclusion. Click Page Types, Select Social Networks.

At a minimum, I hightly suggest you turn off: Myspace.com, Friendster.com, YouTube.com. These are some of the highest traffic sites on the internet with a very click happy demographic. Not excluding these sites can deplete your daily budget in almost no time, especially if you’re bidding on a CPM basis. You can find more sites that you should exclude from your performance reports and add them as you find them.

In another post, I’ll go into how to structure your content campaigns, and even how to gather an initial list of themes to target. Once I have a my campaign created, I like to cast a wide net, then reel em’ in. Meaning, I run the campaign for the entire content network (with a few exclusions). Then once I’ve found what domains, pages, ad copy is working, I can create a placement targeted campaign and go in for the kill.

Way of the Warrior: Tip of the Day: Run your content & search campaigns separately, then gather performance data from Google by creating a weekly scheduled Placement Performance Report for your content only campaigns. Remember, data gathered for the content network may take longer to show than a search campaign.

• Content Network Domination With ImageAds