Google site targeting allows AdWords advertisers to target only the sites they want. Cost is on a CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) basis. That CPM ad will compete against the CPC (cost-per-click) ads in the auction - and if it wins, it will run in place of the CPC ads that would have otherwise appeared. As an AdSense publisher, you would get paid for each impression on that ad, rather than for each click. So site targeting means more money. If a site-targeted ad (text or image) appears on my sites, it means that that ad is paying you more than any CPC ad that would appear in that ad unit.

I don’t know why Google chose to send me this email now. My sites have been selected for site targeted campaigns before so this email was surprising to receive. What could be happening is Google is planning to dramatically increase site targeting to advertisers and want their publishers to be ready for it.

Now comes the obvious question; how do I get my site selected for a site targeted campaign? Believe it or not, this is not a hard question to answer. Here they are.

Have a High Quality Site

This is a must! Advertisers like to advertiser on high quality sites. The chance of them doing a site targeted buy on a whore site created just to take advantage of AdSense is zero. If you want to attract site targeted advertisers, make sure your site offers high quality unique content that are updated regularly.

It will also help if your site covers industries that are known to have CPM advertisers. Those industries would include, but not limited to, technology, B2B, financial, auto, retail, travel/hospitality, media & entertainment,

Built High Traffic

In order to make good money with site targeted CPM ads (and CPC), you need high traffic. But you need this traffic concentrated to just a few sites. This goes back to my lesson about having one big site Vs. 44 small sites. Let’s assume both do 1 million page views, but in the second case the million views are divided by 44 sites, so each site does 22,727 page views. A direct advertiser looking to buy a million impressions doesn’t have time to set up 44 separate ad buys. Even is the 44 sites were of better quality than the one big one, he still wouldn’t do it because it’s too much paper work.

I’ve delt with advertising agencies before. They have to do the same amount of paper work when do a 100,000 impression buy as they do a 100 million impression buy. Ad agencies, like everyone else, don’t like to work too hard. When their clients give them a budget they will spend the quickest way possible. That normally means limiting their spending to bigger sites.

Run “Advertise on this site” Link

On every AdSense ad, there is an “ads by Goooooogle” and “Advertise on this site” link. The ads by Google link shows up with every ad, but the Advertise on this site link can be turn off by the publisher. If you want to increase your chances of getting a site targeted buy, then you should not turn off that link. Having the link there tells the advertiser reading your site that you are available for a site targeted campaign.