When you advertise on Google you have the option to have your advertisements appear on the “Google Network”. These are sites other than Google which display Google adverts as this excerpt from Google explains:
On these sites, your ads are displayed alongside content relevant to your keywords. Your ads may appear on news sites, personal web pages, emails or many other types of content sites and products.
Overture, Fastclick and other keyword advertising organisations also have “networks” of sites to consider.
Most advertisers optimise their keyword advertising campaigns to ensure good placement and value for money in the search engine results pages. Optimising for networked sites is currently overlooked by many advertisers and as such is an area where a little advertising spend combined with some intelligent targeting can have mind-blowing results.
Many of the internet’s highest traffic sites carry keyword advertising, as do major sites within specialised areas. A plain banner advert on a the front page of a major website is expensive, getting your networked keyword advertising to appear is currently more a case of being smart rather than rich.
Google has recently (July 2005) launched the ability for advertisers to place their ads on particular network member sites. This opens up a whole new area for advert optimisers to work on exploiting to the full. Keyword advertising managers will still have to use their guile and experience to achieve the equiviliant results for clients wishing to have a presence on sites publishing adverts from the other networks, while exploring the new opportunities opened up by the Google enhancement. Within the biotechnology arena this means that companies can get their adverts on sites such as Bio.com, Biomedcentral.com and The Scientist for a fraction of the cost of display adverts on those sites. The ability to target adverts within selected sites on a keyword specific basis using Google’s excellent keyword matching technology means such advertising can be highly efficient.
Sci7 offers advice and management of keyword targeted advertising and specialises in online marketing for the biosciences.