Conventional wisdom is usually not wise. That’s why thinking outside the box is so important in PPC affiliate marketing. Take for instance, the content network. I don’t know how many times I have heard “experts” say don’t use it whatever you do. The fact is, the content network can and does work.

Case in point:

I have an education offer that I have been experimenting with for about 3 months now. I have 2 identical campaigns running on Google; same keywords, adgroups, and ads. All is the same except 1 campaign is on the search network and 1 is on the content network. The results are surprising.

Search 3 Month Conversion Rate = 8.23%

Content 3 Month Conversion Rate = 13.87%

The content network sends about same volume as the search network. But the content network is converting 5.6% better than the search network. That’s right, content is converting better than search! Plus my bid prices are about 40% less for the content network. Of course every single offer and campaign is different, which is why testing is key. If I would have paid attention to the “experts” I never would have found this little goldmine. In this particular case, my results clearly disprove the notion that the content network doesn’t work for affiliate campaigns.

This is a first for CDF networks – we have been banned from something! I received the following email from Yahoo publisher network (YPN) last week.

I have never used YPN much due to their poor ad targeting, but I had tested it on a few sites and even on a few client sites that we are doing some work with. Nothing shady at all, these are legitimate business sites. So I am guess the “suspicious click activity” reason does not apply. According to the form letter, “poor traffic quality” is the reason they axed us. Unfortunately my email to YPN for further explanation has gone unanswered so all I can do is speculate. I’m not terribly upset either way, because I have never been a huge fan of YPN and even contextual advertising in general (from the publisher side that is). We will see if they ever respond and provide an exact reason.

Has anyone else been banned from YPN?

It seems everyone and their brother has a content network now. After MSN’s launch a few weeks ago, now Ask.com is about to join in the context game. Here is what they have to say about it:

“On May 14^th, The Ask Sponsored Listings Team will roll-out an exciting new feature – contextual targeting. With contextual targeting, you can seamlessly extend your pay-per-click search campaigns to sites in our content network.
Reaching over 34 million unique users each month, the ASL content network includes premium content sites such as Match.com, Citysearch, Evite, and Ticketmaster and more. Ads are targeted to publishers’ web pages by matching ad content and keywords to page content so the ads displayed are highly targeted to the reader’s interests.”

It should be interesting to see how these sites convert for affiliates. I’m willing to test anything once. Look for a review in the future from me….