For example, if you sell children’s clothing and outerwear, keywords you might have for an ad for scarves are “scarf” or “scarves.” You may also have keywords with additional adjectives, like “colorful scarves” or “pink scarves.”

Based on these assumptions, Google may display your ads when users query such terms as “lacey scarves,” “sexy scarves,” or even “elegant scarves,” since you have the word “scarves” as a keyword in your campaign. Users who query these terms are not the right potential customer for a site that sells cute children’s scarves. Users on a mission to find a specific item will often click on ads, check out the site, click back and go on to the next site.

Add keywords that drive the “wrong” traffic to your site as negative keywords, so when they are included in the query string, your ad will not appear. “Wrong” traffic means users who are looking for a product or service you do not provide and who, based on their query, would definitely not be interested in what you do provide.

Use Google’s new reporting feature to find these terms. There will likely be words or phrases that are completely unrelated to your business, and these keywords have cost you money unnecessarily. Turn them into negative keywords so you can focus your budget on the terms that are likely to convert.

For example, the ultimate goal for a television ad for dishwashing liquid is to convince the viewer that the next time they buy dishwashing liquid, they should buy that particular brand.

An online ad for dishwashing liquid can’t really get enough information across to convince a user to buy that product. The online ad takes the user to a website that extols its benefits. Even if that site is not an ecommerce site and doesn’t sell the product, the purpose of the site to convince the user that the next time they go out to buy dishwashing liquid, they should buy that particular brand of cleaner.

The online ad program should influence the messaging: PPC versus CPM

Ads running on a PPC basis should first create interest and then qualify the user before they click through to the site, since each click will cost the company money. Qualifying the user first stops wasteful click-thrus and increases ROI.

Ads placed on a site with a weekly or monthly CPM should create interest and drive as much traffic to the site as possible. Since ad expenditure is based on the number of people that have the opportunity to see the ad and not how many people click on the ad and go through to the site, the ad doesn’t need to qualify users as much as a PPC advertisement. But that doesn’t mean you should write an ad that sends everyone to the site. It means an ad on a CPM site doesn’t have to qualify the user as much as a PPC ad.

Remember, there are certainly exceptions to this rule and we’re not talking about branding efforts online.

If you take one thing away from this post it’s this: online ads drive traffic to websites, which then sell the users on the product.