HowTo: Integrating with Google AdWords, Setup Instructions and Best Practices Options

[kenmcd2003]

HowTo: Integrating with Google AdWords
February 2005
By: Scott Switzer
www.awarez.net

For: PAN 2.0, PAN 2.1.xx/Max 0.1.xx

Originally from the Max mailing list (with minor edits to update)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004
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There have been a number of questions on the list about integrating phpAdsNew and Max with Google AdWords. We have been using Max integrated with Google for some time. The following is the way in which we integrate the products.

Note: Max v0.2 which will have an alpha release this month (Oct. 2004), will have much tighter Google (and Overture, and other search engine) integration.

The following description is how to integrate phpAdsNew 2.1/Max 0.1 (and phpAdsNew 2.0 as well) with Google, as well as some 'best practices' that I use to keep the two products in sync.

1. Set up your AdWords account in Google. Create the campaign, keyword groups, and keywords. When building the creative, put in a dummy URL for the time being. I am assuming that you will have a different creative for each keyword group.

2. For each campaign in Google, create a campaign in Max. Name the campaign the same as you have named in Google, but append a ' - Google' at the end. For example, if the name of the campaign in Google is 'Hotel', name the campaign in Max 'Hotel - Google'. This way, if you use multiple search engines, you can have 'Hotel - Google', 'Hotel - Overture', 'Hotel - eSpotting', etc.

3. Create a text banner for each keyword group in Google. The description of the text banner should be the title in Google. The contents of the text banner should be the body of the text banner in Google (e.g. line1 and line2). Note that this is for organisation only - the text banner will only be used to count clicks, but it is easier for me to keep the naming the same in both products. The destination URL for the banner should be filled in with the desired destination for that keyword group.

4. If you want to track multiple campaigns across a single search engine, you need to set up a publisher. Create a publisher called Google. Create a text zone for Google.

5. Next, create click URLs for your banners. At the moment, you need to create the click URLs by hand. The format is the following:

- PAN 2.1/Max 0.1 users should use the format:

CODE

http://my.adserver.com/adclick.php?bannerid=bbbb&zoneid=zzzz&source={derive}

- PAN 2.0 users should use the format:

CODE

http://my.adserver.com/adclick.php?bannerid=bbbb&zoneid=zzzz

- Replace 'my.adserver.com' with your specific domain name.
- Replace 'bbbb' with the specific bannerid for the keyword group.
- Replace 'zzzz' with the specific zoneid for the Google publisher that was set up in #4 above.

Note: PAN 2.1/Max 0.1 users will have the benefit of having the exact search term stored in the 'source' field of the adclicks screen. In addition, there is a keyword report in the reports section that provides a breakdown of CTR by keyword group and keyword.

6. Cut 'n' Paste your click URLs into the appropriate keyword group creative in Google.

7. TEST TO MAKE SURE THE URLS WORK!!!

8. For PAN 2.1/Max 0.1 users, you can also set up conversion tracking by linking trackers to the search campaigns. Please reference HowTo: Conversion Tracking and the Max 0.1 User Manual, Tracking, page 66.

This method will work just as well with Overture, eSpotting, and other engines.
I will leave it to you to implement to other search engines.

Please provide feedback, questions, etc., on this process here in the forums.

Thanks,

Scott Switzer

This post has been edited by kenmcd2003: Mar 25 2005, 02:38 PM

[aliatar]

Sorry but, isn't this integrating with AdWords rather than with AdSense? I was looking for the later, more specifically whether it is against AdSense terms of usage to serve AdSense ads through phpAdsNew and arrived here.

[Erik Geurts]

Hi,

First: It does look like you're right, this is apparently a story about PAN and AdWords.

Second: It's perfectly legal to deliver Google AdSense ads through PAN, and I can tell from experience that it works like a charm. The only thing is that you won't see clicks on AdSense ads in PAN. You will see them in the AdSense interface, obviously!

Erik

[kenmcd2003]

Hmmmm . . . I think you are right. Let me check further.

I took the original from my list emails.
Here is the original post in the list archive.
https://max.awarez.net/pipermail/users/2004...ber/000219.html

----------
OK. I fixed it.
It must be talking about AdWords because it talks about pasting your click URLs into Google.

This post has been edited by kenmcd2003: Feb 28 2005, 02:30 PM

[scott_switzer]

Yes - this was my mistake in my original post - back to bite me again!!!

[Ciao121]

I'm trying to use this doc with MMM 0.3.03 alpha.

In this version there is no adclick.php. Does anybody knows what is the right click url to use in google adwords?

Thank You

[scott_switzer]

adclick.php has been changed to ck.php in MMM v0.2 and v0.3...

[conrado]

No Redirect

We need to have Adwords tracking on client landing pages without redirecting. Our plan is as follows:

* Create a text banner in MMM following [http://forum.openads.org/index.php?showtopic=7039 the Adwords integration howto]. We want to avoid redirection, so we will not provide a destination URL.
* Create a tracking tag for the client in MMM, and put it in the client's landing page.
* Modify the tracking tag's javascript so that it also loads the text banner via the URL from the Adwords howto, and thus records a "click".
* We believe this should cause a cookie to be set and the relevant db records to be updated, so that we can later use a tracker on the conversion page and collect/view stats for conversions.

Recording client URL data in the database

We need to have client URL data in the database for reporting. Our plan for this is as follows:

*Create in Max Media Manager a tracking tag with variables.
*Load the variables with the required URL parameters.
*Verify how this is stored in the database.
*Verify if we can generate report by those parameters

[blastro]

Has anybody successfully served adwords campaign links thru openads?

What I'm looking to do:

adwords campaign -> openads keyword-targeted creative served on my domain -> advertiser page (with openads conversion tracker pixel on order page)

Also, I'm curious about the function performed by the {derive} token on the url, but have not found any mention of this in the documentation.

[blastro]

bump. I tried this with openx 2.4 and it does not appear to be working. Can any of the developers explain how {derive} works?


Here's my setup

adwords:

campaign #1
adgroup #1
adgroup url:
http://www.my-adserver.com/.../ck....source={derive}



openx:

publisher: google
adzone: google text ad
campaign: my-affiliate-campaign
text banner: my-affiliate-adgroup-google
clickthru url: http://my-affiliate-site/redirect/2524?sid={source}

The redirect is working, but the {source} param is not being passed thru. What am I missing here?

[Erik Geurts]

Hi,

For an AdSense ad you should not be using a banner of type "text banner" but rather "HTML banner".

Erik

[enhance]

I have the same problem like #11. The source=Value is not passed in to the landing page.

Also how can I connect the AdWords->Site landing Page -> OX exit button in the Statistics.
I have many OX buttons that jumps to other websites, so we want to track from what source they came and what button they clicked when exited the site.

Didn't find anything related to that...

any help would be great

thanks

[bitage]

hello everybody
i ve read this really interesting post and i tried to configure an adwords integration with out openx 2.6.3-
i followed all instructions and i been able to create an url to put in my adwords campaign.
the url looks like this: http://performa.bitage.it/adclick.php?bann...=5&zoneid=5
the banner is a simple text ad with the publisher home page url like 'destination url'.
everything seems ok but we encountered a little weird problem:
the first time you click on this url on any computer we have in our office, you get a 404 error reply from openx
from the second time, everything work fine e we get a succesfull redirection to the publisher site.
Is there anybody who can tell me why we have this weird behaviour???
Maybe i forgot to put some more parameter in my url?

thanks for your help

Marco

[ppetree]

Sorry but, isn't this integrating with AdWords rather than with AdSense? I was looking for the later, more specifically whether it is against AdSense terms of usage to serve AdSense ads through phpAdsNew and arrived here.

What is the distinction between the two: AdWords and AdSense?

Adwords are the ads you BUY based on the keywords you choose.

Adsense are teh ads you SERVE, in theory, based on the keywords in your site.

[Harry Mike]

In ads whether we should use html banner or text banner?