How to promote an affiliate offer with Google Ads?

Affiliate offers that accept contextual advertising

The first step you should take before using Google Ads for affiliate marketing is to check if your campaign accepts content advertising. Below you will see lists of affiliate programs on the Moyens I/O network that accept such ads and are valid in February 2020.

Check this always updated list for the latest information.

Direct contextual advertising

Direct contextual advertising aims to drive traffic to the advertiser’s website. Not all programs on Moyens I/O allow affiliate marketing with Ads, so let’s see which ones will not oppose such promotions:

• AutoEurope
• BicyclesBooking.com
• Booking.com (Pre-approval required)
• busbud
• compensatory
• the cruise critic
• drimsim
• economybookings.com
• Expedia
• GetTransfer
• Go City Cards (Pre-approval required)
• Holiday Taxis
• HopaYacht.com
• Insubuy
• Intui.travel (Pre-approval required)
• ItaliaRail (Pre-approval required)
• i road
• kiwi.com
• kiwi taxi
• myrentacar.com
• Omio (GoEuro Travel GmbH)
• Paul Camper
• QEEQ
• Rail Europe
• Rentalcars.com
• caravan sharing
• sanatorium.ru
• Sputnik8.com
• Ticket Network
• tickets
• Railway
• tutu.ru
• Viator (Pre-approval required)
• VisitorScope
• Voyagin

Indirect contextual advertising

Sometimes affiliate programs do not allow direct advertising on websites. What you can do is drive traffic to your website where you will place affiliate links and tools. For example, it is prohibited to direct advertisements to the KAYAK.com website, but you can instead advertise your website with KAYAK widgets.

brand offer

Most companies prohibit brand contextual advertising; this means you cannot use brand names in advertisements.

So, even if your partner allows contextual advertising, they won’t necessarily have to mention the brand name, so be sure to find out before placing an ad.

What if Google Ads is not allowed?

Companies like 12Go Asia and AirHelp prohibit any affiliate marketing, directly or indirectly, with Google Ads (AdWords). Which promotion strategies should you choose in this situation?

• Native advertising. Such ads do not appear for promotional purposes as they match the main content of the page. It is often used on social media and as a referral.
• Clicks. After the visitor clicks on any part of the main web page, the ad becomes visible in a new browser window.
• Pop-up windows. These types of ads appear when you click anywhere on the page. They can also occur randomly or even without visitor intervention.
• Pop-unders. These are ads that open in another window. They are not too offensive as it is still possible to interact with the content on the homepage.
• Targeted ads on social networks. Ads are created based on the target options offered (geography, behavior, etc.).
• View ads. Text, image or video ads are created for mobile or desktop to drive people to your website to increase brand awareness and audience loyalty.

Also, good old email marketing and SMM are still in effect. You can also distribute advertising links through messengers (Telegram, Viber, etc.) on your channels and communities, as long as they are relevant.

Each advertiser has their own marketing strategy and allowed traffic types. Regardless, Google Ads is only one way to conduct traffic arbitrage, and there are many others.

How to work with Google Ads?

To promote affiliate offers, it’s essential to check what type of ads each one allows and then set up the campaigns. Below you will learn about affiliate offer advertising in Ads:

• First, create your Google Ads account or sign in with your existing Google account.

• Skip defining your main advertising target and go to the “Experienced Google Ads” button.

• Choose the campaign type: Text ads, app installs, YouTube or various ads on the web.

• Select single target. Depending on the campaign type you choose, you will be presented with various objectives. For example, for Search campaigns, you can select sales, leads, or website traffic. Supposedly, you select “Website traffic”.

• Set your campaign name, then choose networks, location, language, audience, budget and bid. For example, you will be offered to focus on high-quality traffic or viewable impressions to increase website traffic, and then an appropriate bid strategy will be provided. Set your daily budget – how much you are prepared to spend each day (which can be changed later). Start with a small budget as it won’t ruin your campaign, but it will give you a good example of how the ad is performing.

• Next, you will be asked to create ad groups to choose your target audience. You can filter potential audiences by keywords (as in the example below), age, gender, parenting status, and household income.

• You can narrow the reach with keywords, topics, and placements. For example, if you joined the Moyens I/O partner program Drimsim, the relevant keywords would be “universal SIM card”, “no roaming SIM card”, “to get a universal SIM card”, etc. it could be. You can copy one of these keywords. and paste it into the “Google keyword ideas” field to get the relevant phrases and see the number of monthly searches. Other ad groups are created in the same way.

• One of the last steps is to load the ad. You can skip this and create the ad later.

The campaign is ready. You can click on “Overview” to see the number of clicks and impressions you get in a given day and how much money is spent per click.

There, you can set the budget and bids. In other words, choose the keywords to bid on (the budget should be adjusted during the campaign to increase the budget for the most effective words and decrease it for zero-leading phrases).

Do not forget to specify the start and end date of your campaign. Permanently monitor results to reveal the most efficient ads and optimize your campaign. For this, you must associate your Google Ads account with Google Analytics.

Best practices for contextual campaigns

Consider the following practices to advantageously differentiate from your competitors when using Google Ads for affiliate marketing.

• Determine your content strategy meticulously. Content marketing is the foundation of advertising. Once you trust people to click, it’s important to provide them with valuable content to give them reasons to click on your ads. The content strategy should be aligned with the product promotion. It is important to build on the basis of the audience profile.
• Make your website easy to navigate. The simple and clear design without lots of sections, text and images will guide the visitor to the ad without any hassle.
• Predict users’ reaction. Make a map or a transcript of tentative responses to directly address potential objections or questions and develop responses to reflect them in advertisements.
• Use a customized approach. Contextual advertising relies on a variety of targeting criteria to provide contextually relevant advertising experiences.
• Choose relevant keywords. The right semantic core attracts leads rather than just visitors, allowing you to save your budget and lower the bounce rate. For example, if you’re promoting holidays specific to Cyprus, the phrase “cheap trips to Cyprus” would mean the visitor might click on the ad to get the low-cost offer, but wait a minute when they see the website for high-end trips.

Promote affiliate offers with Google Ads

Google Ads is one of the most popular promotional tools to drive high-quality traffic to your website, and many publishers turn to ads to boost their affiliate campaigns. Ads are easy to set up and allow you to target a specific audience. Payment is calculated based on the offer model you choose and can be adjusted at any time.

To make a profit, it’s important that your affiliate campaign brings in more money than you spend on traffic. To be successful, remember to pay attention to details, optimize ads, be careful when choosing an audience, experiment, and more. If you need a spike in traffic and want to promote your offer as soon as possible, consider using Google Ads (Adwords) for affiliate marketing.