It's a sad moment, but it was easy to see coming.
Google has now officially killed off site targeting.
The function that allows advertisers to choose to advertise directly on your Web pages still exists. But now it's called "placement targeting."
There are two differences.
The first is that in addition to choosing a website they want to place their ads on, advertisers can now choose the ad unit they want to place their ads on. They do that by looking at the custom channels that you've made available and by picking the channel that they think will get the best results.
The other difference is that advertisers can now post cost-per-click ads (CPC) as well as CPM ads that pay per thousand impressions.
Both of those differences are important.
The first means that it's very important that your channels are well labeled and described. In addition to giving your channel a meaningful name, you can also add a description to it that will encourage advertisers to bid for that spot.
You can think of that description as a place to make your advertising sales pitch.
So tell your advertisers what sort of content their ad is likely to be near. Remind them how you've optimized the ad unit for maximum results. And provide some demographic detail about your users, if you have that information.
You can even give them an idea of how many clicks they can expect from that position. Whatever is likely to increase the odds of getting a high bid should be included.
The second difference means that it's more likely that units you'd planned as CPC revenue-generators will stay that way.
I'm always saying that your site should have a mixture of different ways of making money. It should have CPC ads, CPM ads and affiliate ads too. That will let you squeeze the most out of your users.
It's not the end of the world if one of your CPC units becomes a CPM unit, especially if Google believes it's going to make more money. But I'd like to keep my revenue systems balanced. The new change means that they will probably stay that way.
The bottom line is that if your custom channels aren't set up for site targeting, I mean "placement targeting," this would be a good time to optimize them.
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