Yes. As part of our goal to improve and maintain advertising quality within AdWords, our performance review system frequently evaluates the quality of keywords and ads in campaigns that are opted in to our Content Network. The system then assigns Quality Scores to your ads that influences their rank and price on the Content Network.
How we determine Quality Scores for the Content Network
A Quality Score is calculated for your ad each time it's eligible to appear on a Content Network placement. The following factors are considered:
- The relevance of the ad and keywords to the placement
- Your ad's performance history on that and similar placements
- The quality of your ad's landing page
Quality Score is calculated in this way whether or not you have selected placements in your ad group, and whether your Content Network setting is 'Relevant pages only on the placements I target' or 'Relevant pages across the entire network.'
How Quality Score affects your ads on the Content Network
Quality Score is used to rank your ads on Content Network placements. The better your Quality Score, the higher your ad position.
Quality Score also affects your eligibility to enter the ad auction. Lower-quality ads may require a higher bid to compete in the auction. Fewer impressions on the Content Network may mean your Quality Score isn't high enough for your ads to be shown at your current maximum CPC or CPM bid. If you'd like to receive more impressions without working to improve your ad quality, you'll need to increase your maximum bid.
However, we don't encourage you to raise your bids in these cases. Instead, you should re-evaluate and improve your ads and keywords to create a positive experience for users who see your ads. Doing this should improve your ad performance on both the search and Content Networks.
Improving your content Quality Score
To improve Quality Scores in your ad groups for campaigns that target the Content Network, you should focus on increasing the quality of your ad text and keyword list so that they all relate to a single specific theme (rather than several). For help on making these improvements, see our optimization guidelines.
If you follow our guidelines when making these types of changes, you're more likely to see a positive impact on your content Quality Score overall. This can help to improve your ad performance and allow you to pay less for clicks across the network.
