Google Adwords Offers Ad SchedulingGoogle Adwords is probably the single most popular advertising channel available to online merchants. In the last couple of weeks, Google has added new powerful features to the Adwords interface giving online marketers more control. The first of these features is known in the industry as dayparting or ad scheduling. It allows marketers to adjust maximum bids or pause campaigns during certain parts of the day. The second option is accelerated delivery, basically taking the throttling off of the budgeting mechanism. Both of these are great new options and provide advertisers with more control of their campaigns.
If properly setup, ad scheduling can provide advertisers more bang for their buck. Why? Ads can be delivered at times when conversion is highest. Let's say for example that an Office Supply vendor primarily targets large corporations located in the United States. It may not make sense for ads to be delivered at 2:00 in the morning. In fact, people clicking ads at 2:00 a.m. are likely not the right target customer for this merchant unless they are working really late! If conversion is greatest from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. EST on weekdays, this merchant can use ad scheduling to increase his maximum bid during this time period. Conversely, he might decrease his max bid on the weekends and pause it in the middle of the night. The bottom line is that the merchants can use ad scheduling to spend advertising dollars when it is most effective.
Prior to Adwords merchants could accomplish this very same thing, but it was a very manual process. Merchants would login at different times of the day, pause or change their bids for campaigns - a very time consuming process. In fact, one could adjust bids all day long if they were so inclined. Adwords scheduling automates that process, saving the marketer time and money.
In addition to ad scheduling, Google Adwords is now offering an option to use standard delivery or accelerated delivery. Standard delivery will take a campaign's daily budget into account and space the delivery of ads throughout the day. Accelerated Delivery displays ads as quickly as possible until a budget is depleted. This option is best for advertisers that want to increase the likelihood that they will spend their full budget each day.
Google Adwords drives an enormous number of orders for online merchants. Nexternal encourages merchants to turn use both ad scheduling and accelerated delivery to better their marketing efforts. Both of these enhancements are "off" by default and need to be enabled. More information about these new features can be found in the Adwords interface.
