The Phorm advertising platform has been under some close scrutiny from privacy advocates. With current pressure and legality issues it looks almost sure to fail. The most recent suggestion is that the platform should be made an opt-in system. This would require users to actively choose to participate in the marketing program. With such negative publicity large numbers will not be forecast.

Aside from these points, the basis of Phorm appears to be wholly floored. The System claims to serve ads relevant to every web user based on historical search, but surely rather than serving ads relating to what a user has looked at before. It would be more beneficial to serve ads relating to what a user is looking at now.

Content advertising though Google adwords can do just that.

By using well researched keywords to actively target the sites know to be used and associated with a target customer group, ads can be placed along side the content that your potential customers are looking at.

Rather than displaying ads for wedding dresses 2 days after a wedding, start showing ads for honeymoons or baby grows! Content advertising allows the targeting of users much earlier in the buying phase, but while they are still interested in the areas you target.

Content advertising can be easily controlled in terms of spend. Much the same as paid search, the pricing can be based on cost per click (cpc) models. As the campaigns progress it can be made more aggressive, targeting specific domains, sites or pages that perform well with either cpc or cost per thousand impressions (cpm).

The ad variants are also optional. As well as the ubiquitous text ads (3 lines of text and a URL) that have made Google so mighty, Image ads in a range of IAB standard formats and video ads can all be utilised. Video ads, the newest option have shown some promising success rates, that have lead to the addition of Google gadget ads that can be spread virally.

The performance rates of any content campaign will struggle to match a well built search campaign, but the combination effect of search and content along side each other can be very strong. From past experience, a good content campaign will show in greatly increased searches of brand terms and also increases in direct traffic. Recent stats show up to a 22% increase in search campaign conversions when content targeting is used.

While Phorm may be on it’s way, content targeting is here already and proven it’s self to be worth while for online advertisers.

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Across MSN, Yahoo and Google the fundamentals of the content network are the same. Each network scans the content of sites in their network, and the campaigns that are opted into appearing on the content network will have their ads shown on pages that are highly relevant to both their business and what the user is searching for. The Google network for example has sites such as About.com, NYTimes.com and Gmail, all engines analyse the content and theme of the page, text and language, to assign a context to the site for future reference, so later on the when a new ad comes along they can find the kind of site they are looking to place the ad on quickly and efficiently. The engines match the ad based on the keywords and targeting options, so your ad only shows to the interested audiences.

On each of the engines you set separate bids for the search and content networks, this is due to the fact that the costs are a lot different on each of the networks. In Google you pay on a cost per 1,000 impression basis, if you paid for every impression you received you would be paying a huge amount of money as your ad can be on many sites at any one time. The cost per click is also much lower on the content network which means that the cost per conversion can be low, however, you do not get as many clicks on the content network as you do on the search network it is and should be used as an extra form of advertising. Google also offers site targeting where by you can choose which sites will be of most benefit to you, that is to say, which sites are your potential customers most likely to visit, and only target these sites. This will save a lot on impressions and bring the costs of advertising on the content network down considerably.

Yahoo in the content network works on a cost per click basis, you again have to set separate bids for the search and content networks. The Yahoo Publisher program which is the program that Yahoo use to set users up on the content network as advertisers, does not have the depth that Google’s ad system has, and they seem to be trying to make up for it by biasing their targeting to more expensive ads, which generally causes their syndicated ads to have a higher click cost but a lower average click through rate. In Yahoo you can choose particular categories of topics that you want to target, and use this to target where you think your potential visitors will be searching. This like Google’s site targeting will bring the costs down considerably as you will only be showing on the most relevant pages to your business. This runs on 9 partner sites only Yahoo!, The Guardian, FT.com, Soccernet, The Independent, ITV, iVillage, Lycos & Via Michelin. Yahoo have also introduced seasonal match, where by the users who click on your ad on the content network will be taken to your site and directed to your seasonal merchandise.

MSN’s content network works on a rich media format where by the advertiser can buy blocks of advertising space. These come in number as in you have purchase a block of however many ads you want to show, or you could buy a block of time. This is particularly good especially on an engine like MSN who have niche markets such as travel and shopping where the cost per conversion can be lower than that of Google. Therefore with a little research you could find you when the potential customers you are targeting will be searching and target those at the optimum time of the day. In the USA MSN have recently launched a new content site, which boast the same conversion rate that you will find on the search network, although I think the jury is still out on that one.

The content network can be a useful tool in establishing brand name and adding to the conversions that you are already receiving in the search networks across the engines, but it should be used carefully and the targeting needs to be implemented effectively, only with research into your potential customers will you realise the benefits of the content network. It is often the case that it will work more effectively if you need to split your campaign into search and content, any keywords will be assigned a site based on the ad group they are in so within a content campaign you need to ensure that you have specific keywords for services or products available and less general keywords that you may see in a search campaign. It is also beneficial to split them out so that you can analyse the data effectively, click through rates are much lower in the content network and within the platform everything is averaged. Therefore, any information consists of all campaigns, and so your search results could suffer or you could be working from inaccurate figues.

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