The success of contextual advertising on partner sites included in the Google Display Network depends on how well the sites for displaying ads are selected. After all, the quality of the traffic coming from them affects productivity.
Limiting impressions on sites with low performance helps to reduce the proportion of irrelevant interactions. In this article, we will show you how to turn off impressions on underperforming sites on the Display Network to maximize the return on your advertising investment.
How to find ineffective sites in the Display Network?
You can often hear the opinion that Google Ads does not work. This is how beginners usually characterize campaigns, with expensive conversions or low-quality traffic.
And, indeed, this happens: an inexperienced advertiser can spend most of the budget on bounced clicks from mobile applications or YouTube’s “children’s” audience. Disabling impressions on inefficient sites in the Display Network helps to solve this problem.
Advice! Before limiting the resources for displaying ads, carefully study the statistics on the sites. This report is the main source of information for decision making on CCM campaigns. There is data on click-through rate, the number of impressions and conversions, the cost of the transition.
To determine how successful a particular site is, compare the number of conversions and transitions. If there are a lot of visitors, but they do not convert well into customers, then you are wasting advertising funds. In a situation where the conversion rate is normal, be sure to control its cost.
Impressions on which sites are typically ineffective?
Unsatisfactory results of advertising campaigns in Display Networks, as a rule, are observed when placed on sites belonging to one of the following groups:
The result of impressions on resources with a predominantly children’s audience is frequently a click-through of the budget. Using negative keywords helps solve the problem. The limiting list can include general search queries, such as the titles of popular cartoons.
Important! When creating a list of negative keywords, do not overdo it so as not to exclude quality traffic in this way.
Limit impressions on inefficient sites:
To analyze the accumulated impression data, add sites and YouTube channels with children’s content to the exclusion list;
Search the web for ready-made lists of unwanted resources;
Automate the process with specialized solutions (such as site cleanup scripts);
Identify and exclude topics that do not exactly resonate with your topic, but do not overdo it so as not to block impressions for most users.
In smartphone apps
If you are not promoting a game or any software for a mobile device, then the right decision is to limit ad impressions in applications on smartphones.
Mobile game fans, for example, respond poorly to ads that are not related to leisure activities using a smartphone. After all, the context of such shows is, by definition, very specific.
Information! When using applications, accidental clicks on an advertisement may occur. The user goes to the site and almost immediately leaves it.
Previously, advertisers could block impressions in apps with one click. Now, to disable it, you need to add the sites appstore.com (to limit impressions on Apple devices) and adsenseformobileapps.com (to block ads on Android) to the list of irrelevant sites.
How to identify and eliminate inefficient sites?
At the first stage, you should get rid of inefficient sites in the CCM with abandoned traffic. Visits should be taken as a basis, the duration of which does not exceed 15 seconds.
Start a GTM upload in Analytics by setting the interval to 15 seconds. Set the trigger by specifying 15kms as the interval.
Next, set up a trigger for transferring events to the analytics system. Set a segment for everyone who did not reach the goal:
Adjust the “Excluded Audiences” in your custom ad campaign by adding a segment there.
If the goal of the campaign is not remarketing, then there is no point in showing ads to those who have already converted. You can limit such impressions by excluding the relevant IP addresses. True, this must be done carefully.
Set the frequency of your ads (preferably no more than 5 times a day) to reduce the chance of your visitors burning out.
Following these tips, you will minimize click-throughs and the number of ineffective ad impressions in the Display Network. And having accumulated the necessary statistical data on user behavior, you can disable irrelevant sites.
How to disable impressions on inefficient sites in Display Network?
The system offers several options for configuring the prohibition of displaying ads on certain partner resources:
Exclude the site
You can add exclusions in the corresponding section of the “Placements” section in the campaign itself on the Display Network:
By clicking on the button with a pencil, in the opened module, enter excluded areas, for example:
list of websites;
list of YouTube channels;
specific YouTube videos;
list of mobile applications;
all applications from a specific category.
Exclude a certain category of sites
To clean ad spaces in the Display Network within a custom campaign, use the additional parameters block in the “Settings” section.
In the “Excluded Content” module, specify the categories where you don’t want to serve ads. It is recommended to disable:
sensitive content;
live on YouTube;
parked domains.
Use Automatic Google Ads Rules
You can create an auto-rule by clicking on the appropriate link in the “More” section of the “Placements” section of your Google Ads account.
Only the resources manually selected when setting up an advertising campaign are displayed here. You can also block a site from displaying using the “Where ads are shown” section.
However, creating an automatic rule will not work here. Addresses can only be deleted manually. Sort them by cost, compare the values, and exclude unproductive sites from the list.
Important! When disabling a resource, specify what exactly is wrong with it. You should not immediately block all sites that you do not like for one reason or another. To make a decision, first gather enough statistical information.
