Are your AuctionAds showing Run of Network ads (aka RON ads) or ads for $0.99 iPod screen protectors? I see low-priced, identical ads on many blogs. Some bloggers have already stopped using AuctionAds while others are seeing excellent results. What’s the secret?
Most AuctionAds publishers are simply keyword stuffing their ad code. Guessing keywords is the surest way to get RON ads. By optimizing keywords, publishers can greatly improve the targeting and quality of their ads thereby increasing the conversion rate as well as sales.
Set Minimum/Maximum Prices
Use the minimum price attribute to eliminate low-price ads.
auctionads_ad_kw = “keyword1 minprice:25â€;
For example:
auctionads_ad_kw = “iPod minprice:25â€;
eliminates any iPod ads less than $25.00.
Use the maximum price attribute to select low-price ads.
auctionads_ad_kw = “keyword1 maxprice:25â€;
For example:
auctionads_ad_kw = “iPod maxprice:25â€;
selects iPod ads less than $25.00.
Use Stop Words
You can eliminate unwanted ad variations by using stop words (aka, negative keywords).
For example:
auctionads_ad_kw = “iPod -case -armbandâ€;
will exclude ads for iPod armbands and cases. You can combine minimum price and stopwords:
auctionads_ad_kw = “iPod -case -armband minprice:25â€;
Advertise Popular Items
Use a service such as eBay Pop to identify items with high-volume sales on eBay. Clicking on a item in [tag]eBay[/tag] Pop will give the keywords (including stop words). For example, clicking on Motorola V3 under Cell Phones shows the keywords:
Motorola V3 phone -case
In the AuctionAds code, it becomes:
auctionads_ad_kw = “Motorola V3 phone -caseâ€;
If you want pick you own keywords, make sure to do some test searches on eBay. If you don’t get at least 2 pages of results, you run the risk of getting RON ads instead of what you want.
Rotate Ads
[tag]AuctionAds[/tag] ad units can automatically rotate a group of keywords. Separate your list of keywords with a semicolon.
For example:
auctionads_ad_kw = “keyword1; keyword2; keyword3â€;
also can be written with spaces
auctionads_ad_kw = “keyword1; keyword2; keyword3â€;
will rotate evenly between the 3 keywords. In effect, Keyword1, or keyword2, etc.
A comma instead of a semicolon allows for either/or:
auctionads_ad_kw = “keyword1; keyword2, keyword3â€;
will rotate evenly between keyword1 and either keyword2 or keyword3.
One caveat: Don’t use commas with negative keywords or minprice. Use semicolons.
International Traffic
If you are not US-based or have a high percentage of international traffic, be careful using multiple keywords, stop words, or attributes. When visitors in the US click on an ad, they are taken directly to that item on eBay. If they are in another country it directs them to that country’s eBay site and conducts a search based on all the keywords you selected for the ad. Needless to say, a search based on (keyword1 + keyword2 + keyword3) returns very poor results.
To further complicate matters, the eBay search engine treats the attribute ‘minprice’ as another search term. Also, stop words loose their minus sign. Not good! For publishers outside the US, I suggest using a single highly-targeted keyword. Make sure to test the ad by clicking through to your local site. Test, test, test!
The Cache
Once you make keyword changes in might take a few minutes and/or a few page loads to see the new ads. This is due to caching on the AuctionAds servers. On extremely low traffic pages, you might still occasionally get a RON ad.