We’d like to announce two changes to site targeting in Google’s content network. First, because site targeting now offers more precise targeting options, we’ve given it a more appropriate name: placement targeting. Second, we’re introducing a new cost-per-click bidding option so you can now pay per click or per impression.

Introducing placement targeting

When site targeting was first introduced two years ago, advertisers could search for specific URLs or topics to find individual sites in the Google content network and run their image and text ads on these sites. Over time, we’ve introduced other features like targeting by demographics and richer ad formats such as click-to-play video ads. Now, advertisers can target not only websites but also precise subsections of sites, such as the football pages of a news site, the show times section of a movie site, and even a specific ad unit (a block of Google ads) on a particular webpage.

Because of these new changes, we’ve changed the name from site targeting to placement targeting. The term “placement” can be used to refer to any site or subsection of a site that you choose to target. As the number of placements available for targeting continues to grow, you’ll have even greater control over the parts of the Google content network on which your ads appear.

Cost-per-click bidding for placement targeting

With the launch of cost-per-click (CPC) bidding, advertisers can now choose the bidding option that best matches their needs. If the purpose of your placement-targeted campaign is to increase sales, leads, sign-ups, or other conversion-oriented metrics, you can select CPC bidding and pay when users click on your ads. If you want to maximize impressions and increase brand awareness among your target audience, you can select cost-per-impression (CPM) bidding. And you can specify either the maximum price or the average price (with preferred bidding), that you’d like to pay for each click or 1000 impressions.

Along with Placement Performance reports, CPC bidding for placement targeting was one of the most common advertiser requests we received for Google content network campaigns. We’re excited to make this feature available as part of our ongoing efforts to increase the flexibility and control advertisers have when advertising on the content network.

If you’d like to get started on placement targeting, you can read more about it here.

Earlier this year we stepped back to examine the value users, advertisers, and publishers derive from clicks on content ads. As you integrate ads with your site’s content and navigation, we want to ensure a positive user experience. We identified a few areas for improvement and began implementing changes, starting with our new ad formats in April.

Continuing these improvements, we’ve just changed our text ads slightly to help reduce accidental clicks. In the past, users could click on both the background and full text of an ad, but now they can click only on the title and URL of a text ad. By allowing users to click only on the ad title and URL, we aim to decrease accidental clicks, better aligning visitor behavior with their intent. Overall, the decrease in accidental clicks will keep users on your website, interacting your content, until they intend to click on an ad.

In addition, this new clickable format better aligns with the text ad formats shown on Google.com. We hope this format change contributes to a better, more consistent user experience.

Finally, this change won’t just improve user experience on your site; it benefits advertisers as well. We currently monitor clicks on Google ads for accidental clicks, and the format change complements our monitoring system by further ensuring advertisers only pay for meaningful clicks. By reducing accidental clicks, we hope to increase advertiser campaign value and satisfaction, encouraging additional spend and facilitating higher monetization for all publishers.

I’m not sure how other’s are doing, but I’ve had some wierd stuff going on my main site, first some non english ads invade my site.This was their response to that,Hi Jason,

Thanks for writing in. Our engineering team has looked into your issue and
in order for us to better target Google ads to the content on your pages,
you will need to use a slightly modified version of our ad code. Please
insert the following line of JavaScript in your current AdSense ad code:

google_language = ‘en’;

Insert this code on a new line just above the line in your current code
that begins:

// –>

Note that this ad code is for use only on pages with a majority of the
content in English. Please let us know if you have any trouble with this
code or if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

xxx
The Google AdSense TeamMy ResponceSubject: Re: [#xxxxxxxx] My ads are in the wrong language
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:58:54 -0600

Hi is anyone able to explain why these ads showed up out of the blue?
I have had adsense on this site since 2004 and never had one issue.

JasonAll i got was some cut and paste responceHi Jason,

Thanks for your reply. Our engineering team did not see any problems with
the way our crawler was reading your site so we’re not sure if any recent
changes you’ve made to your site or a system bug may be affecting your
language targeting. Regardless, if you add the “en” language line in my
previous email to your code that action should prevent you from seeing
non-english ads in the future.

Thanks again for your patience and understanding in this matter and feel
free to let us know if your issue remains unresolved.

Sincerely,

xxxxx
The Google AdSense TeamWhat the heck my entire site is english, how can’t there billion dollar spider not know that. Also at the same time my income dropped by FIFTY yes 50% PERCENT. WTH is going on Google.And I can’t add the line of code as I use an 3rd party plug-in to add the ads to my pages. What I did to possible fix the issue was remove site targeting advertising and block the non English ads.So now I’m looking for other ways to monetize my sites as Google changes seem to be a BAD thing.

I cannot believe that my sites had that many accidental clicks.

We’re pleased to announce a change that we’ve made to the incidence of clicks on text ads on the Google content network. Previously, users could click anywhere on text ads running on the content network, including the ad’s background and any part of the ad text, for their click to be registered. Now only clicks on the title or URL of text ads will be counted.

This change better aligns what is considered a click for ads on the Google content network with what is considered a click for ads shown on Google.com. By changing the clickable area on text ads, we hope to increase user satisfaction with both our advertisers and our publishers.

As a result of this change, some advertisers may notice a decrease in both the number of clicks and the clickthrough rate (CTR) in content network campaigns — along with an increase in the average return on investment (ROI) of content network traffic. For insight into the ROI you receive from your AdWords ads, you can install conversion tracking or Google Analytics to measure whether the clicks your ads receive lead to valuable actions on your site. If you use a third-party tracking service, you can use ValueTrack tags to identify the traffic coming to your site from the Google search and content networks.

We hope that this change will result in better user experience with Google content network ads, along with potentially improved ROI for advertisers. If you have any comments on this change, please let us know and we will forward your thoughts to the content network team.

See this post to see what this change has done to my income.

http://www.jasonfrovich.com/seo-and-search-engines/accidental-clicks-fade-into-the-background/