At the beginning of April, Google launched a new feature for Google AdWords called Google Budget Optimizer™. Advertisers only need set a target budget and the tool automatically adjusts maximum cost-per-click (CPC) amounts for active campaigns. It adjusts these cost-per-click amounts to maximize the number of clicks and hence yield the greatest volume of visitors to the advertiser’s web site for a specified budget.

Before jumping headlong into this, please consider some of the pros and cons of using this tool. It helps marketers reach their targeted budget every month without requiring constant management of the AdWords account, making it easy to set it and forget it. This can help reduce time when you setting your maximum CPCs, while effectively maximizing traffic.

An example of its use follows: Merchant X wants to spend $5000 per month on AdWords but is currently spending $3000 a month on average. By activating Google Budget Optimizer™, his CPC increases until he either reaches his maximum budget or is in the first position for all of his keywords, whichever happens first. This is useful for someone that wants to maximize the numbers of clicks they can get within their budget but doesn’t have the resources to actively manage AdWords campaigns on a daily basis.

Another example is as follows: Merchant Y currently reaches her $5000 per month budget but wants more clicks for that $5000 spend. She activates Google Budget Optimizer™ In this case, it might reduce her bids on more expensive keywords and increase bids on cheaper ones allowing her to get more clicks for the same budget. This is especially good where, as is often the case, the more expensive keywords you are bidding on are less targeted than the cheaper ones, therefore increasing your conversions on a per click basis.

Although it is a powerful tool, Google Budget Optimizer™ is not for every marketer. It certainly makes sense if the advertisers keywords are all equally likely to convert. Some online merchants, however, do not necessarily want to get the most clicks for the lowest price. They want targeted leads. Contrary to the assumptions made by this tool, all clicks are not created equal. Some are more targeted than others and some give a greater conversion rate, and thus ROI, than others. It specifically neglects this factor. It helps merchants maximize clicks as opposed to helping them maximize high-quality or targeted clicks. The goal of any merchant should always be to get visitors to stay and ultimately convert into customers, not just visit.

Given this, some might say that Google is the primary beneficiary of this tool, as well as ad agencies that try to maximize budgets because they are often paid as a percentage of the amount spent, helping it's users to spend more and increasing Google's revenues without necessarily accounting for customer conversion rates and neglecting merchant ROI.

Google Budget Optimizer™ will not help you to achieve a specific ad position. It also does not help you to choose which keywords to use, how to write your ad copy or to create your landing page. Additionally, users should note that Google Budget Optimizer™ is only available for campaigns of 10,000 or fewer keywords. To try it out, login to an AdWords account, select a campaign, edit settings and enable the Budget Optimizer. It's really quite easy. Users should also follow these links to get more information from the Google website:

https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=16271&hl=en_US

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/search.py?query=budget+optimizer&Action.Search=Search+FAQs&type=f

Google also notes that if merchants are testing Google Budget Optimizer™, it does have intelligence that optimizes your campaign based on past behavior. A short test of just a few days might not yield the same results as one that runs longer. The longer it runs, the more intelligent it becomes on managing campaigns.

Any e-commerce merchant that markets can tell you, the name Overture is synonymous with Pay Per Click / Cost Per Click advertising. Overture (formerly GoTo.com) revolutionized the online marketing industry, making such PPC and CPC the catch-phrases that everyone is now familiar with. And, as you might recall, back in July of 2003, Yahoo bought Overture for $1.6 billion. Now, Overture and Yahoo have combined their marketing services and will offer them under one new brand name - Yahoo! Search Marketing. The products and services previously brought to you by Overture are now available through the Yahoo! Search Marketing site located at http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com. There, under the new brand, you can also submit to yahoo's previous offerings, namely Yahoo! Shopping's Product Submit and Yahoo! Directory's Express. You should visit this new site, bookmark it and become familiar with your new surroundings. One additional thing to note is that Precision Match is now called Sponsored Search.

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