9 replies to this topic

[TheGreatDane]

Right now working on my first campaign in Adwords, I have the following question:
Having set up an ad group with more ads, I can't figure out, how I control which ad will be displayed when?

IMO it would be logic, that you could establish a connection between the keywords and a corresponding ad with copy holding the keywords. But as I see it now (and have tried so far), the ads seem to be displayed randomly. It this correct or am I missing something?

[compar]

I don't think you can control it. If you have several active ads Google will rotate them. And there is no reporting on which ad get the traffic. The only way to do this is turn all the ads off except one and let it run for a few days or even a month and evaluate it and then to the next ad etc.

I personally find this very unsatisfactory and would like to be able to finetune ads in a shorter time frame and more interactively.

[SearchRank]

Hi Per,

What I do is to set up one ad per group of keywords - called an "Ad Group". That one ad will then display when any one of those keywords is searched for. The ad should relate to the keywords in the group if you want to attract click-thrus. You may have one keyword per ad group or many if they are similar.

Depending on your daily budget, your ad may or may not continuously display when searching your selected keywords. Goolge attempts to level out the displaying of your ad with your daily budget so that your budget won't be completely exhausted say in the morning of any given day. So if you have a daily budget of $50, your ad is most likely going to show every time one of your keywords is searched for as opposed to if your daily budget was $1.

Also keep in mind that your ad may or may not show due to its popularity as well.

Hope that helps.

[Haystack]

I Per,
The only way to set up a specific ad for each keyword is to create a separate campaign for each keyword. That can be a real bear. A more realistic strategy is to set up a group of related terms as an ad group. If you want to send people to unique URLs for each term, this can be done using Powerposting:
https://adwords.goog.../powerpost.html

If you run more than one ad within an ad group (highly recommended) Google will randomly display the two ads at first, but over time it's supposed to gain a bias toward the ad generating a higher CTR. I don't know if it really does this, so I simply pause or delete the lower performance ads over time and try to improve upon the higher CTR ads.

[TheGreatDane]

Hi Bob,

I don't think you can control it. If you have several active ads Google will rotate them.

OK!

Hi David,

What I do is to set up one ad per group of keywords - called an "Ad Group". That one ad will then display when any one of those keywords is searched for. The ad should relate to the keywords in the group if you want to attract click-thrus. You may have one keyword per ad group or many if they are similar.

Thanks, David - that will do the trick! The other points you mentioned, I know already (but thanks anyway). I have read Goodmans report and it holds some very valuable information, even though it seems to be outdated on one small topic - the ability to bid per keyword, which is possible now. Anyway, in this exiting dynamic world, we are operating in, things very rapidly gets outdated. Still the report is very good.

Thanks for your input, gents.

[TheGreatDane]

Thanks to you as well, Ed!

[Vertster]

I would suggest using this feature of Adwords to your advantage. It lets you apply testing techniques to your creatives. True you do not have exact control over which ad will display when, unless you use the methods already described below. But I would do this:

(Keep in mind this technique is only designed to maximize you CTR, not your conversion rate. That is a WHOLE 'NOTHER DISCUSSION!)

1. Start out with three completely different creatives. Let these run for a couple weeks or longer depending on your account activity. Pretty quickly, one will emerge as the clear winner in CTR. Pick this one, and remove the other two.

2. Now create three different variations on the winner. Make small changes, things like word choice, abbreviations, etc. Also, create a fourth creative that is still different from the rest.

3. Wait until some time passes and review the results. You should see a winner. The 3 variations will likely be pretty close, but maybe not! Sometimes a small change can have a big impact.

4. Take your winner and create three ads, that are all the same. Why three all the same? Create a fourth that is completely different. This one is your test. In theory, your proven control should display 75% of the time, and your test 25%.

By always running a test, you can always attempt to improve your adwords creative, without risking what you know works well.

[compar]

1.  Start out with three completely different creatives.  Let these run for a couple weeks or longer depending on your account activity.  Pretty quickly, one will emerge as the clear winner in CTR.  Pick this one, and remove the other two.

I'm not currently running an active AdWords campaign but I didn't think that AdWords reported which of you several ads the click throughs were on. Unless you mean to set them up each in it's own ad group as suggested by Searchrank.

What am I missing?

[Vertster]

The clickthrough rate is reported for each adword text ad. Look immediately underneath each text box on the left.

[compar]

The clickthrough rate is reported for each adword text ad.  Look immediately underneath each text box on the left.

That's great, thanks. That really does allow you to fine tune your copywriting -- I only wish there was more room.