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Site Targeting

Announcement
April 25, 2005

Today, Google announced an important step forward in our ongoing efforts to find new ways of connecting users with relevant, meaningful advertising.

Site targeting is a Google AdWords limited beta feature. It enables advertisers to easily target their ads to thousands of specific content sites across the Google Network – providing a new way to target people who will find their ads relevant and useful. Advertisers using site targeted ads can now also place animated image ads, in addition to our existing text and static image ad formats

Site targeted ads are priced using CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) bidding. These ads will compete for placement on a site with other CPM and CPC ads in Google’s auction. By increasing competition for ad space on specific sites, we think that people who visit those sites will get more useful, more diverse, and more relevant ads.

Specifics of site targeting include:

  1. Targeting – Advertisers will now be able to select specific content sites across the Google Network where they would like their ads shown. Advertisers can target these sites easily and choose from thousands of sites. Enabling advertisers to target a specific ad to a specific site creates another way – in addition to keyword-based targeting – of letting advertisers connect with people who are likely to be interested in their product or service.
  2. Bidding – With site targeting, advertisers will set a maximum CPM-that is, the maximum price they’re willing to pay for every thousand impressions their ad receives on a particular site. Their ads will compete for placement on a site with other CPM and CPC ads in Google’s auction. Google’s approach is different from other CPM models, where advertisers must pay a fixed CPM. On AdWords advertisers pay no more than the minimum price needed to run an ad on a particular site.
  3. Ad Formats – In addition to text-based ads, site targeting will include another ad format option, animated image ads. This is an enhancement to the image ads option we launched last year. To ensure maximum quality, all image ads are carefully evaluated before they are allowed to run on the content sites in the Google Network.

Today’s new site targeting feature is currently available as a limited beta to a subset of advertisers. As with any Google beta, we will be testing, gathering feedback and enhancing the features. We intend to roll these features out to the broader AdWords customer base in the coming weeks.

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