When using Google Adwords to manage your PPC campaign you’re offered the option to show your advert within the “Google Content Network” (here-after referred to as GCN). This option is enabled by default so you have to consciously decide to turn it off for your ads to only be shown on Google search results. I’ve never fully trusted GCN and let me just explain why.

The information need
Get into the mindset of the user upon being presented your advert; if they’ve found it through searching on the keywords you specified then they have a specific information requirement that your advert is tailored towards. This means that a user searching for “Buy iPod” has the interest in buying an iPod. Therefore you would expect a higher percentage of these users to convert to your “Buy an iPod” PPC campaign. On GCN your advert would be displayed within an Adsense pane on a page where your keywords were mentioned; the article might be about “how much the iPod sucks and why would anyone ever buy an iPod” but the contextual engine will see “buy an iPod” and show your advert. Would you expect that to convert equally as well?

Publishers are complete #$@%ers
To be a profitable blogger you need invasive adverts; ones that users may click on accidentily. Look at the majority of Adsense placements that you see (even mine) – they’re invasive to ensure users click on them every now and then. As a publisher I don’t care whether my reader buys your product, I just care about the CPC I get from them hitting my Adsense. So looking at it from the other direction is interesting because it’s entirely likely that you’ll be paying out for accidental clicks if your advert is displayed in an Adsense pane on the GCN.

What sites is it displayed on?
You have absolutely zero control over what sites you advert is displayed on; it’s questionable how much control Google has over this too. Would you be happy having your legitimate advert being displayed on piracy websites? Warez? Porn? No, I wouldn’t either. I appreciate that “technically” Google doesn’t allow these people into the Adsense programme but do you really believe everything they say?

I don’t trust Google enough
I’m not confident that Google are able to track clicks across the GCN accurately enough. I’ve seen enough odd things go on with my Adsense that I wouldn’t want my PPC campaign to fall victim to the same oddities. There are literally hundreds of thousands of websites showing Adsense code and I genuinely believe Google is unable to track the clicks on them all accurately. Not that I don’t trust Google but there are a few insider things I’m aware of that make me distrust their tracking a little.

That’s it really; through mistrust or my belief in a search engine user’s “information requirement” I dislike the option of the Google Content Network. I just don’t see how it’s worth having the same CPC on a clearly less reputable envionment. At least the search results are more controlled whereas anything goes in the great-wide-web and I don’t want my money relying on it all being kosher.

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