Keyword Targeting on Display Ads: How to Create & Optimize Keyword Display Campaigns

---

Keyword Targeting on the Google Display Network. That’s what I’m going to talk about in this article. I’m going to walk you through what is keyword targeting, I’m going to show you how you can set one up. And lastly, how to optimize and the metrics that you should look for in optimizing your display campaigns. So firstly, what is keyword targeting on the Google Display Network. So the Google Display Network is showing ads on publisher websites, they have literally to over 2 million websites that you can put banners on. And the keyword targeting is where you give Google a whole bunch of keywords. And they find which websites have content around those specific keywords. So it’s very, very different to Google search. And people get confused with it. Because they think keyword targeting is Google Search. This is very, very different. That Display Network is getting people as they’re reading a website, you know, various blogs or news websites. And your ads will be on those particular websites that have content related to the keywords that you give it. For example, say you’re trying to get in front of people who like to cook. So you would give, give Google the keywords around recipes, and baking and cooking, and all those kinds of cooking related keywords, and Google will find content for on with which have websites related to cooking. I’m going to show you how you can set this up, it’s actually really, really easy. So I’m actually in an existing display campaign. As you can see, I’ve got this ad group here, which has the keyword targeting. But if you don’t have that, obviously, you would hit this plus icon to create a new ad group, I definitely recommend separating the different targeting you have into separate ad groups so that you can compare the performance.  So I can click plus here to create an ad group.  And here is where I’ve got to give it a bid. So let’s just give it $1 For now, and here is where I want to do the targeting.  So I’m going to add targeting.  And these are all the different targeting options that I can do.  And obviously, I want to do keyword targeting as the topic for this particular video. And this is where I’m going to input all my targeted keywords. So I’m going to say cooking recipe recipes. I’m going to say baking, and really build a whole bunch of targeted keywords that are relevant to my industry.  So think, you know, really top of funnel type keywords, broad keywords, and also specific keywords, as well.  And then what I want to do is to only show ads, which have, you know, web pages related to these keywords. I am going to turn off optimized targeting because that is going to give Google permission to go beyond my targeting, which I do not want.  And then obviously I would load in my ads here for that,  and then you click create ad group So that’s how easy it is to do.  So if we go through this keyword targeting this existing ad group, I’m going to show you some of the metrics behind the scenes as well. To where I’ve gone is to  when and where my ads have been shown.  And as you can see, this is in the cooking niche.  And as you can see there, a whole bunch of really high traffic because this is actually a pretty new campaign, a whole bunch of cooking related websites, that is getting me in front of exactly my target audience. And as you can see there, all these beautiful cooking websites. So keyword targeting actually does work really well. So first step to optimize is like always ranked by impressions to find the high traffic websites to make sure they’re relevant to people I’m trying to get in front of. If you’re ever unsure if the website is legitimate or is looks like it’s related to your industry, you can just click on it here.  So I’ve clicked on that one. I actually love this blog, this woman’s awesome Nagi. And this is Yep, so this looks legit. It looks like a great website, which it is, by the way. And I’m quite happy with it. Another thing I like to do is I like to rank by click through rate  because I want to look for websites that want to avoid websites that are really kind of spammy and and really have inadvertent clicks and often high click through rate especially if there’s a lot of impressions have, you know, ads in really strategic places that have inadvertent clicks, and I don’t want that. So I always ranked by click through rate. Obviously, there’s not a whole bunch of data here. But over time, I would get more data. So look for that, because you want to kind of get rid of those websites.  And I also rank by cost to see what websites are burning me money or spending money wisely. Unfortunately, for this particular account, we are not able to set up conversion tracking with a whole host of reasons I won’t go into. But ideally, you would also rank by conversions, to find the websites that are relevant, that you could possibly then strip out put in their own placement campaign and, you know, develop a whole strategy around that as well.  Okay, so there you have it. That’s keyword targeting on the Google Display Network. I hope you found this article helpful.