How Keywords and Managed Placements Work Together

When you use both keywords and managed placements together in an ad group, the following two things affect how and where your ad will be shown:

Step 1 - Keywords always do their work first.

When an ad group has keywords, the AdWords system always starts by looking through every possible page in the Google Display Network to find content that matches those keywords. This happens automatically. AdWords takes contextual matching down to the page level. If a placement has many different pages, only those pages that match your keywords can show your ads.

Step 2 - Managed placements further control where your ads may appear. 

Managed placements ensure your ads appear on specific placements you've chosen. If you further restrict your network ad delivery to "Relevant pages only on the placements I manage," your ads will show only on the specific sites where you want them to appear. Your ads can appear only on your chosen placements, and only when pages on those placements also match your keywords.

You'll be choosing the set of placements where your ad can show, but contextual targeting will determine the pages where your ad will show within that set of placements. (You don't have to add keywords. In which case, your ad can show anywhere on the placements you choose, even if your ad doesn't precisely match the content on those placements.)

If you want your ads to show anywhere on a given placement, without regard to contextual matching, then create an ad group with placements only, and set your campaign settings to "Relevant pages only on the placements I manage." That way your placement choices (and the AdWords auction) will be the only factor involved in where your ad can appear.

Pricing for Keywords and Managed Placements

You're first prompted to add a managed placement default bid the first time you add a managed placement to each ad group. You set one default bid for all managed placements in each ad group. Editing this default bid will update the bid for each managed placement using that bid.

AdWords always uses the most specific bid available. If you later set a placement bid, then AdWords will always use your placement bid instead of the managed placement default bid. When you make a placement bid, you're telling AdWords that you want that bid to have top priority for that particular placement.

Here's the general order of bids, from most specific (and highest priority) to lowest:

•Individual bid. If you set individual keyword, placement, or audience bid, the individual bid overrides the ad group default bid.

•Ad group managed placement bid.

•Ad group Display Network bid. You're prompted to set a Display Network bid each time you create an ad group. If you don't set this bid, we'll use the default bid.

•Ad group default bid. If you don't set a Display Network bid for your ad group, our system will use an automatic bid based on an average of all keyword CPCs for the ad group, including the default ad group CPC and individual keyword CPCs.

Bid modifiers, such as changes for ad scheduling or demographic bids, are applied after your primary bid is chosen.