Placement targeting

Placement targeting lets you choose individual spots in the Display Network where you'd like to see your ads displayed. We'll only look at your managed placements when searching for relevant places to display your ads. Unlike contextual targeting, keywords aren't required.

A placement might be an entire website, or a subset of a site. For instance, if you're selling football boots and you want your ad to appear on a particular football website, or only on the sports pages of a newspaper, placement targeting can help you handpick those pages.

Here are a few things to know about placement targeting:

•A site must be part of the Google Network in order to be available for placement targeting.

•The AdWords Placement Tool can help you find placements for your ad as you create a new campaign or ad group.

•As with all AdWords advertising, you'll compete for space with other advertisers. If you choose very prominent and popular placements, you'll need a higher price to win the ad position.

Ad group default bids: Automatic placements

You're prompted to set a Display Network bid each time you create an ad group. It applies to all automatic placements in that ad group. Editing this bid will update the bid for all of the automatic placements in a given ad group.

If you do not later set an individual bid for placements in that ad group, then your overall Display Network bid will be used.

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

•Individual placement bids

•Managed placements bid

•Display Network bid

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

Individual placement bids

Individual bids override the ad group default bids. For example, raising a bid for a strong-performing placement allows you to compete more effectively when your ad shows on that placement. If you change a bid but later want to revert back to the default bid, just leave the field blank when editing.

To edit the bid for an automatic placement, select the checkbox next to it in the automatic placement table. Then, click Manage placement and bid. This will copy the placement to your managed placements table and allow you to adjust the bid. When you add an automatic placement to your managed placements, historical performance statistics won't be copied over. After you've added a managed placement, you can adjust the bid at any time using inline editing within the managed placements table.