Despite what an ill-informed lawyer thinks, parked domains convert well for advertisers.
Yesterday, we learned of a lawyer who felt that domain parking can’t convert for advertisers because he didn’t have success spending $136.11 on parked domain advertising. I met an advertising network CEO a few weeks ago who said his blood boils when someone doesn’t get conversions and claims he received “bad” or “fraudulent” traffic. After looking into his advertisers’ claims, that CEO said he often finds that other advertisers are converting rather well with the same traffic.
We have anecdotal evidence that parked domain names convert for advertisers. Efficient Frontier released a case study, and owners of large portfolios have run their own campaigns with success. I’ve even had great conversions on Dark Blue Sea’s ROAR network, which I understand is delivered via pop-ups on parked domains.
So I decided to run the numbers on a campaign I’m running on Google. The campaign promotes a free report download and requires the visitor to provide their email address. In other words, it’s a lead generation campaign similar to the lawyer’s campaign.
Not to my surprise, parked domains covert quite well.
Here are my stats for the month to date:
Search + Search Network 19.8% conversion rate, $.77 per lead
Content Network (not including parked domains) 23.9% conversion rate, $.74 per lead
Parked Domains 23.3% conversion rate, $.75 per lead
As you can see, both the content network and parked domains are outperforming search ads! Get this — some of the domains that are converting are being promoted through arbitrage, too. And for those people that complain it’s not fair that parked domain names are sometimes served as part of the search network, here’s another surprise: almost all of the conversions I have on parked domains are from the search network feed, not the content feed. In other words, without include parked domains in the Search Network numbers google provides, the search network would be performing relatively worse.
Proof that Google’s smart pricing works? Perhaps, but I’m paying the same amount per click on the search network as the content network.
If I want to further refine the campaign and get better conversions, all I have to do is block the domains that aren’t converting well. But one thing is for sure, I’d be stupid to block the domain channel for my ads. And it’s clear that parked domains names can provide value to advertisers.
The conversion is bad when there is fraud.
The real fight is against fraud, and not parking pages.
Thanks to defend our industry.
“As you can see, both the content network and parked domains are outperforming search ads!”
These results sound pretty odd, perhaps you can add some more details of your experiment, the site, number of clicks, timeline etc to add more credance to these claims.
“I met an advertising network CEO a few weeks ago who said his blood boils when someone doesn’t get conversions and claims he received “bad” or “fraudulent” traffic.”
The person you met was the ceo of a domain parking company, yes?
Zorro –
No, this person wasn’t the ceo of a parking company. It was a CEO of a second tier ad network.
I don’t know why these results would be odd, but I can suggest that more competitive terms probably have a lot more fraud that can push up cost of conversion. Thankfully, you can weed that out.
My sample size is as follows:
Search: 18,864 impressions, 402 clicks
Content Network: 66,740 impressions, 322 clicks
So it’s not a huge sample size, but it’s the only campaign I have that tracks conversions. And it shows that parked domains convert.
@ Francois – you are correct, fraud is the problem. Parked pages that are in very competitive niches probably don’t perform as well because of fraud (same goes for the content network). But a good advertiser (or advertising manager) can just week out the domains and/or content sites that aren’t working.
@ Andrew – Unlike content sites on the content network, you can’t weed out individual domains. That’s the problem with Google’s implementation. It’s binary – either AdSense for Domains is ON or it’s OFF. What advertisers need is a domain network, separate from the existing search and content networks. Just like site exclusion works for the content network, that new network needs to have some kind of granular control.
In the meantime, it’s simply safer for advertisers to simply opt out of the parked domains. For advertisers bidding high on some competitive keywords on the search network, the risk of click fraud from parked domains is simply too high. The only choice is to turn it off.
BTW, I’ve argued that, at least in theory, domain advertising could be more effective than search advertising:
link
IOW, I recognize the value for advertisers in the potential of domain advertising. I also see the impact on my clients of the click fraud that originates from parked domains and the lack of control advertisers have over their ads on parked domains (via either Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing).
Richard, I didn’t realize that. So in other words if there’s one really bad parked domain that’s not converting, and I enter that domain into the exclusion list, it will still show ads on it?
I haven’t tested this on the content network, but this is definitely true on the search network. The procedure for blocking parked domains is separate from standard site exclusion (which only works for the content network). The AFD block is binary. Here are Google’s instructions:
link
Before Google implemented that, you could block at the AFD partner level but not at the domain level (for most parked domains). For example, if I saw some bad traffic from searchportal.information.com, adding that domain to the site exclusion list wouldn’t block the traffic. However, adding domainsponsor.com to the exclusion list would block. Note what Google said in this thread:
link
Here’s a brief excerpt: “Currently, it is possible to exclude parked domain sites using the site exclusion tool. However, depending on the domain, the exclusion method will differ. While most parked domains can be excluded by adding the specific domain into the site exclusion tool, there is a fraction of domains in our network that involve a process of excluding the domains at the partner level, rather than the specific domain level, resulting in the exclusion of all domains belonging to that partner due to technical details of the implementation.”
Keep in mind that that was before they implemented the AFD block when upgrading the site exclusion tool to a site *and* category exclusion tool. Very confusing for advertisers since the rules are different for search network vs content network vs the types of parked domains that run across both of those networks.
I think it was a hack by Google to implement AFD across both AdWords networks and now it’s a hack to block the traffic. Really bad design. I’d expect better from a company like Google that espouses simplicity. Anyway, I hope that cleared things up, a bit. 😉