BUS572-4 Cookies, Topic Targeting &
Google Search/Display Networks
Concept 1: Cookies
The most important concept this week for me was “cookies”. I had always heard the term cookies when I was
around some sort of technology expert but I never knew what they actually were. Cookies are small files that store
information on your hard drive about you or your computer. They are designed to hold a small amount of
data specific to a particular client and website, and can be accessed either by
the web server or the client computer. This allows the server to deliver a page
tailored to a particular user, or the page itself can contain some script which
is aware of the data in the cookie and so is able to carry information from one
visit to the website to the next. This
is important because it allows us to use Google Analytic s to analyze where a
user has been, such as what sites they visit most often. This is how we can
learn patterns in consumer behavior and in turn develop more effective ads to
reach those consumers. My main concerns regarding cookies are centered around
privacy. I’m not positive but I believe anyone who is signed into a person’s
computer can view their cookies to see which sites they have visited. This will
cause a lot of people to remove cookies from their internet browsing,
effectively cutting off that data.
Helpful Links:
Concept
2: Topic Targeting
Advertising has become more and more specific and targeted. Do you ever
wonder how? The answer: Topic Targeting. Topic targeting lets you place
your AdWords ads on website pages about those topics, whether it's agriculture,
music, or something else entirely. This is important for advertisers as they
want their products and services to get to the consumer who is most likely to
purchase them. You would advertise men’s deodorant on a women’s high-end
closing site. Not only does it not make sense but there are more effective places
to advertise a men’s product. My biggest question regarding this concept is how
advertising actually obtain the data they need to place their ads on particular
websites. Obviously you would want to advertise a new pain pill on a pharmacies
website, but which pharmacy? How do they decide the absolute best places to
advertise when given a group of similar websites that attract the same target
market?
Helpful links:
Skill: Google Search & Display
Networks
The most important skill I learned this week when
messing around with my campaign is the Google Search and Display Networks. Using GSDN your ads can be automatically matched to websites and
other platforms such as mobile phone apps, when your keywords are related to
the sites' content. You can also choose to target specific sites, pages about
specific topics, demographic groups, and more. This skill ties together many of
the concepts from this week. Utilizing these functions on AdWords can help us
to run a more effective campaign versus if we didn't have the tools readily
available. I think the hard part for me to wrap my head around is the difference
between Search and Display and how that will affect the outcome of our ads. I plan
to ask Sarah about it tonight!
Reflection:
This week was tough for me purely based on the
readings. The Google video was helpful, as was the case study. However, the
Ghose article threw me for a loop. These concepts aren't difficult to
understand there are just a lot of them. The easier the readings are the more
likely I am to understand and remember the concepts. The scholarly article made
everything that much harder to distinguish for me, which isn't a problem until
you go to take the quiz and you have to remember all of this information, which
is impossible. I hope we stick to the book from now on. Excited for Sarah to come tonight!
Hi Brittany I'm glad you're learning - I know the scholarly article is hard! But you survived! It'll get easier over time :)
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