Google Cost Per Impression (CPM)

Google cost per impression is paying per 1,000 displays of your ad. The equation is M=1,000 impressions, (M is the Roman numeral for 1,000). So if you are paying $5 per 1,000 impressions and you get 10 clicks, you are paying $.50 cents per click, a very good price for a visitor. The problem with paying per impression is what if you get 10,000 impressions and only 2 clicks? Now you paid $25 dollars per click, an unattractive prospect for most.

When dabbling in the world of CPM your ads and marketing campaign (along with landing page design and layout) have to be perfectly optimized to get the most out of your money. CPM advertising is done mostly by large corporations that have professionals who know how to fully optimize ad campaigns and reap the benefit of cost per impression advertising. If you’re doing placement targeted advertising it is imperative to make sure that your ad is above the fold. If your ad is below the fold and 1,000 people visit that website and don’t scroll down, you still pay for the 1,000 impressions and no one has even seen your ad. When we set up CPM advertising we study each individual website that the ad will be placed on. Make sure that the ad is placed above the fold and is specifically targeted to your product or service. In most cases the ad must be flash so that it gets the attention of the user on the website.

The benefit to doing CPM advertising is to reduce your cost per click. In the event you must bid $1.50 to get your banner ad on a website or $10 per impression for the same placement, you are gambling that you will get at least nine clicks or more on the cost per impression campaign to make paying the CPM price reasonable. Think of it like this. You can invest money into a trust account knowing exactly what your interest rate and return on investment will be. On the other hand you could decide to invest your money in the commodities or stock market where you may or may not make more money.  We do not recommend that inexperienced users develop a CPM campaign on their own.  Remember this CPM=Gambling.

Google Cost Per Conversion (CPV)

This is only available through Google and requires a minimum of 50 conversions a month before you can qualify for this bid.  At that time you can review your costs and decide whether or not it is cost effective to go this route.  This is recommended for large advertising budgets because the business or company advertising can determine exactly how much is spent per sale.

1.    Google Placement Advertising; Google placement advertising is a great advertising instrument to use. When developing an ad campaign using Google placement you can search for your target market in these four ways. Remember you have the option to do CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per impression) when setting up a placement targeted campaign.
i)    Browse Categories; where you can pick from a large list of categories and sub categories to choose the specific target you are seeking. You then can view and choose from a list of websites in which you want to place your advertisement.
ii)    Describe Topics; here you can type in topics. Google then searches for websites that match the topic you listed in the search box.  You can then do the same thing and view the websites and place your ad where you would like.
iii)    List URL’s; you actually type in URL’s to see if they are available under the Google AdWords system.  Let’s say you were browsing around one day and you stumbled across a website that would be perfect for one of your ads.  You can then use this tool to find out if you can add this website to one of your ad groups in order to place one of your ads on the website.
iv)    Select Demographics; finally you can search for a specific demographic that is the buyer for your product or service.  You can search by gender, age, and income.  Once you have picked the specifics you are after a broad range of websites meeting that demographic will appear from you to choose from.  Again you choose multiple websites and have now specifically targeted your ad campaign.

When optimizing a placement targeted campaign you want to make sure that your text/graphic/flash ads match the content on the page the user lands on when clicking on your ad.  When optimizing your placement targeted campaign you will find that during treatment studies some of the websites are displaying your ads and others aren’t.  The reason for this is that in most cases when you set up a placement targeted campaign you set up a bid (what you are willing to pay (PPC or CPM) that did not meet the criteria for that page, or you were out bid by another advertiser.  For example, if you have picked 20 websites to run your ad and only 5 of the websites are running your ad, then you need to up the bid on the other 15 websites.  Through tedious treatments and studies ranging out as long as 90 days you will finally find yourself with a fully optimized placement targeted campaign that is helping you and your business succeed. You can make your campaign as large as you would like.