The Google Adwords team has launched a contest around their Display Ad Builder Tool. The tool allows you to fill in your own information and logo to have display ads dynamically created based on selected templates. Obviously, this is for the purpose of showing them on the content network.

I don’t use the content network enough. I think with enough targeting and testing, it could be just as valuable a tool as PPC. Where as PPC is a little more straightforward and seems to has less variables to evaluate, it all comes down to ROI. By using the Google Display Ad Builder to create a content network campaign you could win:

• 1st Place – $1,000
• 2nd Place – $750
• 3rd Place – $500
• 4th and 5th Places – $250

The winners Google selects will likely be focused on ROI and business impact as well:

Entries will be judged at the ad group level by a panel of Google judges for creativity and potential impact on advertising campaigns.

While it would be great to win free Adwords credits, I felt like it was extra incentive to get familiar with a tool I should already be familiar with. I probably won’t win, especially since I don’t plan on closely tracking ROI – I’m going to run a more branding and general traffic campaign. But if the tool works well, I’d certainly expand and use it more regularly.

The bottom line is I’m not a graphic artist and don’t want to spend a billion years making ads that look amateur anyways. Perhaps Google Display Ad Builder will help me make better looking ads at a quicker speeds. We’re about to find out.

I decide to use Display Ads on the Content Network to push traffic to ChefClub.net. I run the site with my mom and to be honest, it gets WAY too neglected. It’s a vBulletin forum community about cooking. I love cooking but since I sometimes work 40 hour days pulling all-nighters, I’ve found it difficult to spend much time cooking when Subway’s 5 Dollar Footlongs are right down the street.

But I miss working on the site and spending time with my mom cooking new recipes so it’s time to revive it. Hopefully the Display Ad Builder Tool will allow us to bring in some targeted traffic to our Soup Recipe Contest and the community in general. A forum without traffic is counter productive.

I logged into Adwords, chose to create a new Campaign called ChefClub: Display Ad Builder Contest and made a new Ad Group called Recipe Contest. After that, I selected Display Ad Builder for the very first time in my life (yay):

According to Google, the ad layouts/templates they provide are optimized for direct user response and provide a call to action that we can identify. The call to action is very important – it’s why they’ll click the ad instead of passing it over.

Also intersting is Google has broken these display ads down by purpose (direct response, interactive, seasonal) and by industry (entertaiment and media, financial services, retail, technology, travel, etc…) with sorting available by highest click through, most popular and newest. Keep in mind that highest click through DOES NOT mean highest ROI. You still need to test what is converting if you’re doing ROI based stuff.

There were 27 different templates to choose from when I looked:

I ended up picking All Purpose 10 which you see above – because it is simple. A lot of these ads are created based on the assumption you are selling an actual product – which I’m not. If I my site were selling actual products or services I would be much more inclined to use this in the future… and I probably will.

While you fill in the information for the advertisement, it dynamically updates the display of the ad so you can see how your changes are affecting it. By the time I was finished, I had an advertisement that looked ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS!

I think its safe to say that the above ad is nothing short of pitiful. Yes, I DID choose one of the simplest templates on the planet but that’s because I wasn’t selling actual product(s) with a traditional landing page. If that IS what I was doing, there were several animated options which likely would have fit well… and looked good.

In contrast, let’s take a look at a 300×250 ad that I will create – right now in photoshop – in about 10 minutes:

If you ask me, my version looks a heckuva lot better. All I really did was printscreen my website and cut up the images in the already professionally designed theme to make my ad. You could do the same thing… even printscreening someone elses site/elements to compose your own ad.

The main difference here is that the ads from Google Display Ad Builder are animated which brings another layer of professionality in addition to attracting the eye and simulating interactivity. One thing we’ve learned from all the crappy ebook salesmen out there  is that sometimes ugly performs better than pretty. The smart thing to do would be to test both because you never know… that ugly ad might perform better.

The other problem with that is my only way of measuring performance is Click Through Rate. And we know that Click Through Rate and ROI are two VERY different things. An ad that gets someone to click but does not have them follow through with the intended goal of the advertisement is not productive.

Unfortunately my tracking system is subpar, but I’ll be fixing that in a future post and sharing all the info with you so you can do the same. A good goal would be to get someone to sign up for the forum and I think that’s a task which is also measurable/trackable.

In any case, the value of the Display Ad Builder is about to multiply… literally. Whereas I just created ONE advertisement the Display Ad Builder takes the information, titles, colors, logos and other elements and dynamically creates ALL ad sizes for you:

Now THAT is a pretty valuable asset. I would have to rework all of the elements in photoshop to fit each ad size and that could take awhile. Because of this feature I can almost guarantee I’ll be using Display Ad Builder with some PPC CPA stuff in the near future. But ONLY assuming I can find an ad template that fits whatever it is I’m pushing.

I chose to continue with my ugly ads with a Placement Targeting campaign. Had I done keyword targeting I would have been looking at keywords like “recipe contests”, “recipe contest”, “recipe club” and stuff like that. Instead, I’m going to be looking for sites that allow image ads in the Food/Drink > Culinary Training category – nice and targeted:

So I picked a bunch of sites, chose CPC over CPM, set a daily budget a maximum click bid and I’m off to the races! It’ll be interesting to see the CTR and Impressions that each ad type gets – the ones through Display Ad Builder vs. Homemade.

I think this combination of Display Ad Builder and Placement Targeting could be a winning formula. While it looks quite shabby with the ad I’ve tested, there are some targeted ad styles for tech products, travel, finance and others that would make really great ads and getting creative with placement targeting could bring in some nice ROI. Now if I can only find the time in the day!