Tag: AdWords

This article called “What One Million Dollars in Spend Has Taught Us About Enhanced Campaigns” has been getting some wide discussion in my sphere of business. Many are concerned with the inability in AdWords to separately target mobile and for some advertisers, mobile clicks that are not converting are eating up their ad spend.

“A quick note about this data is that while CPA is up across the board this is partly due to seasonality for a few major accounts. It’s obvious though, that CPA is up on computers for Search and Display but that mobile and tablet CPA is up at a much, much larger percentages and has started to make up larger percentages of budget allocation. This is also macro data so one account with high CPA goals that has increased budget over the past few months could drastically skew these numbers.” Make sure to read the rest of this interesting article.

Interestingly the data seems to provide that ad spend is up on mobile but eating into the total ad spend budget significantly enough that conversions are down according to this oneaccount manager that wrote the article. When this manager moved out of mobile using the -100% bid adjustment, tablet traffic moved in to fill this space. Due to the change in ad serving strategy, this account manager saw an increase in the cost per conversion.

For our clients, we are watching the mobile ad spend very carefully. For some we are pushing down the bid adjustment, a few we have moved out of the mobile ad space, but for many mobile just has not been a big cash drain. For many of our accounts in the month of May we did see a big drop in conversions, and increase in the cost per conversion, but for nearly all it was not tied to mobile traffic, rather appeared to be increased market competition possibly as a result from Penguin 2.0 and new advertisers moving in to AdWords.

It will be interesting to see what happens with Enhanced Campaigns in the very near future. I would expect that AdWords will eventually give advertisers the ability to bid adjust mobile, tablet, and desktops as this would keep advertisers happy and allow for greater control over ad spend. For now, advertisers and account managers can only bid adjust mobile activity.

Although we are not seeing the types of results for our clients that the author of this interesting article shared, watching carefully the percentage of your budget being eaten up by mobile in AdWords right now if a very good idea.

Don’t know how to use AdWords Editor? You can now download editable reports in AdWords and then change the data as you desire and then upload the report back to AdWords for immediate changes. Read the instructions for more details on this new way to update your AdWords account.

I’m playing around with the feature and here are a few of my thoughts.

1. If you use AdWords Editor, you probably don’t need to use this feature, but for those that don’t want to learn how to use AdWords Editor, this gives immediate and instant updating in bulk access.

2. The key is to select a report where editable makes sense. That would be specifically be for a bid, a keyword, or ad text. Download the report but make sure to tick the check box next to editable. Change your report the way you want, and then using the left slide out menu go to the report center. Click the tab at the top that says upload and then upload your report. AdWords will instantaneously update your account and let you know what loaded and what failed.

Follow these specific instructions when changing keywords:

“General rules for editing your keyword reports

1. Do not modify or delete the first three rows: Report info, Parameters, and Column names.
2. For every change you make, whether it’s an addition, a deletion, or an edit, you must enter a value in the “Action” column. You have three options: Add, Remove, or Set. If you don’t enter one of these action words in the “Action” column of a row, our system will ignore the row completely, and your changes will not take effect.
3. When editing an existing row, you can only modify these three columns: keyword state (“paused” or “enabled”), destination URL, and keyword max CPC. Changes to any other column will be ignored.

   For example, when editing an existing row, you cannot change the keyword or match type values. If you wish to change a keyword’s match type, you must delete the keyword and re-create it with the proper match type. (See the “Instructions for common edits” section below for a step-by-step guide.)

4. Don’t worry about deleting extraneous columns or the total rows. Simply upload the whole report, and we’ll ignore what isn’t essential.
5. Do not use square braces ([ ]) or quotes (“”) to indicate a keyword’s match type. Instead, specify the keyword’s match type by name (broad, exact or phrase) in the match type column.
6. Be sure to save your upload file in one of our supported formats(.csv, .tsv, and Excel).”
7. Find out more.

Looking over the criteria for how to get AdWords to accept the uploaded document, I still have to say that I think AdWords Editor is easier to use, but for those that simply don’t want to use it or have a greater knowledge of Excel this new option may be just right for you.

When it comes to Google AdWords, decisions you make about how much you should spend should all revolve around statistical data. Never make a decision about your ad spend based on feel-good ideas or what you “think” you should do. The biggest thing I tell clients to remember is that:

AdWords will spend every penny if you allow it to do so.

For many clients whose business is struggling in today’s economy or have been affected by Penguin and Panda updates, it boils down to how much should I spend?

Here are several tips and talking point I review with my own AdWords clients about budget.

1. Never spend more than you really can afford and base your initial budget based on what you are comfortable spending without a return. Don’t go in debt to drive traffic!

2. Make budget decisions based on data. Use conversion tracking, business research, Google Analytics data review to base your budget changes.

3. Allot your ad spend where it is generating a return or where you have made a decision your focus is for traffic not for conversions.

4. Hold out some of your budget for a mature program for testing to see if you can uncover additional revenue areas. Test new markets but be realistic in your ad spend, limit your testing, and evaluate the return.

5. If money is tight, look to advertise only in the areas where you are getting sales. Don’t serve ads nationwide and in Canada if when you review where you have shipped goods in the last 90 days and only three states are involved, rather serve ads to those three states and then when money is not so tight expand your exposure.

My rule has always been – own your city, own your state, own your region, then own the nation!

If you are looking for an AdWords Certified Partner to set up and manage your AdWords account, I invite you to check our our service offerings and fee schedule.