Cobnut's Ads Crackers

COVID-19, Google Ads & Your Business

2020-03-27T11:56:00.000+00:00

At the time of writing (late-March 2020), it would be easy to conclude that the COVID-19 virus (aka Coronavirus) is going to be a disaster for all businesses. Self-isolation, lockdowns and other less obvious changes to consumer behaviour are already causing large falls in revenue in certain verticals, and it's likely to get worse before it gets better.

However, not all businesses should be adversely affected, and even those that are can almost certainly mitigate the effect and look for opportunities to bolster their revenue in the coming months. So, what steps should you be taking as a Google Ads advertiser, or as someone who may consider Google Ads as an option during the outbreak?

Don't Panic

In the immortal words of the late Douglas Adams, "Don't Panic!". I've already seen a number of posts online from advertisers who appear to be pausing their Ads campaign(s) as a knee-jerk reaction to the situation. Sure, there are going to be a lot of advertisers who will find their accounts are no longer (as) profitable as they were and for many pausing their campaign(s) is probably a wise move. However, there will also be a lot of advertisers who will be unaffected and probably a lot who will find their business actually grows during this period.

People have not completely stopped buying or using services, their buying and use patterns have just changed and that change will affect different businesses in different ways. So don't leap before you look!

Change Priorities and Re-examine Opportunities

If you sell a range of products or services it's likely you'll have optimised your Ads campaign(s) for those that sell well. However, you should now be looking at your range and considering how performance may change and make appropriate alterations to your Ads. For example, if you sell games you may in the past have found games for large groups or parties to be the most profitable while games for individuals/families were less so. Given the current restrictions that situation is almost certainly going to be reversed. Equally, if you've tried Ads in the past and they didn't work well for you, consider whether that may have changed. Think about what people can do at home rather than what they can't. Just a few examples are DIY, gardening, hobbies (painting, crafting, modelling, etc.), cooking, car maintenance, and a whole host of things that people usually complain they don't have time to do.

If you've tried to promote your scale-model kits online in the past and failed, now could be your time...

Be Transparent

Make sure your customers know you're aware of and responding to the COVID-19 outbreak. Your customers are likely to be asking questions about hygiene and handling procedures - even for products that really aren't affected by such things - so make sure you have details of what your company is doing FRONT PAGE on your site and, most importantly, do what you're saying. If you tell your customers you've got hand-sanitiser at every packing station, make sure you have hand-sanitiser at every station.

If you are getting questions from customers about the virus and your response, make sure you're adding these to your FAQ page and/or site information.

The absolute worst thing you can do is pretend nothing is happening. It doesn't matter what your personal beliefs are, what matters is your customers' viewpoints and concerns so make sure you address them.

Be Responsive

Right now nothing is certain so it's vital that you stay up-to-date with the news that affects your business (and your customers). Make sure you keep your Ads and your website up-to-date as well, reassuring your consumers that you're responding appropriately and in a timely fashion.

Consumers always respond well to Ads that appear to be specific for a time/event and this will apply now.

Don't Reach Too Far

If you've not currently got an online e-commerce solution and your business seems like it might benefit during the pandemic, think long and hard before devoting resources to make too great a change to your business practices. An e-commerce site could easily take two months or more to build and fully test and, hopefully, in a few months time all this will be over and your investment may not be appropriate/economical in the long term.

If you believe you have opportunities for direct-selling online, consider other options such as taking orders by email or phone before jumping towards a full e-commerce build.

Equally, think very hard before extending or altering your product range. If you currently sell hiking boots and have established a good customer base, consider whether suddenly starting to sell face-masks is going to help your business or damage your brand long-term. (If you do sell hiking boots, now might be a good time to focus on those anyway, rather than face-masks).

As with all "sudden" demands for certain products the general rule is that if you weren't in that market at the start, you're too late, so think elsewhere...

Don't Mis-sell or Mislead

There is a LOT of misinformation, rumour and downright lying happening on social media and elsewhere online during the outbreak. DO NOT be tempted to try and sell miracle cures or preventative medicine/equipment. Google has already suspended countless Ads attempting to take advantage of the unwary and it is very likely your account will be permanently suspended if you attempt to circumvent the polices. Don't do it.

When it's Over...

While it seems a long way off at the moment, eventually life will return to normal and you should ensure you then re-examine your accounts to put things either back to how they were or at least to a position where you can re-evaluate what has changed again. No one will want to see Ads talking about the Coronavirus three months after it's a nasty memory, so set a reminder and be prepared to make changes again to keep your account current.

If you need help you can always contact us. Google's support services are as affected as any other business but the support community is still active and able to answer any questions you may have.

Why Researching Your Purchase is SO Important

2019-10-16T16:26:00.000+01:00

There are some easy ways to make money these days on the Internet, as long as your morals are loose at best. One of the primary options is to sell something online using convincing advertising and source that product at a ridiculously low price from overseas. This particular scam comes in two flavours, you can either market a product that is usually expensive at a low price (though still far higher than its cost to the supplier) or you can market a product that is usually cheap at an inflated price based on its "revolutionary" nature. Here's a couple of examples I've seen recently.

The miracle showerhead
A few months ago I saw an Ad for a showerhead that included some impressive CAD design drawings exposing the inner workings which, apparently, ensured your shower water was soft, clean and ionised (or some similar rubbish). The image of the actual product looked pretty good and the Ad was backed by a single page site including testimonies, 5* reviews and all that. But it was £89. That's a LOT of money for a showerhead so my cynical hackles were raised even further. A quick search on Amazon found another supplier for what was clearly the same product, but at £49, OK, that's an improvement, but still ridiculous. More searching and the price from different suppliers continued to drop, £44.99, £39, £35, you get the picture. By now it was clear that this was one of the above scams, selling a cheap product at a high price, so I wondered just how cheap they were to buy. The screenshots below tell the story:

Claiming an original price of £39.90

Here's one site I found for this post (I couldn't find the original one where it was £89, hopefully the owners of that site are no longer able to trade). This site offers the head at a much more reasonable £19.90, "reduced" from £39.90.

Note the interesting claims. And here's an eBay listing. Anything look familiar?

Yep, £3.98 with free shipping.

In case you can't read it, yes, that's £3.98 with free shipping. So the eBay seller here is able to sell this product at £4, pay for the shipping themselves, and still make a profit!

How does £19.90 sound now?

The other example I've seen recently is for a drone. According the video, the drone was developed by a disgruntled ex-employee who was fired for standing up to his bosses when they switched to using low-quality components for their own well-known drone. The video promises the highest quality components, revolutionary performance and, well, everything including the kitchen sink.

The reality? IF you buy one of these drones you'll probably receive one, but the reviews online tell a different story to the video. Poor quality build, low-spec features, ultra-low reliability.

The drone is an example of the second kind of such scams, selling something that is usually expensive at a vastly reduced price while giving a good reason to do so (the unfair practices of major sellers). Interestingly enough, just a few weeks after I saw the drone video I saw it again, at least I thought I did until I realised it was pretty much the exact same sequence of shots, the same script, swapping out "drone" for "phone" in words and images. That's just lazy.

So, by all means follow enticing Ads, it's how legitimate traders promote their businesses but, as has always been the case, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is and you have the search tools at your fingertips to check it out.

Amazon and eBay are good places to look for the same products being sold by multiple vendors. On Amazon if you see the same product sold by 10 different people at 10 different prices, that's almost certainly an indication that it's a dirt cheap import and should be avoided. Oh, and don't be fooled by minor branding/colour changes, they're easy to change on supply.

On eBay you're more likely to find the product at close to its real value (see above), though as I said, if they're able to make a profit at that price, think what the actual value of that product might be. With a showerhead the worst that's likely to happen is a disappointing shower, with a drone you could be looking at physical injury or worse.

Caveat emptor.

Understanding Every Searcher's Intent

2015-06-09T03:36:00.001+01:00

Advanced Keyword Management Technique Using The Search Terms Report

The search terms report in AdWords should probably be the first thing you check when you are trying to better understand your account health or looking to make it more efficient. Keyword management is an art of balancing reach and cost efficiency - if you have too many broad keywords, you could be paying for clicks that are driving little or no value to the campaign goal. On the other hand, if you have too few exact keywords, you could be falling short of the target number of conversions. To find the sweet spot, the search terms report should be periodically used to add keywords and block irrelevant searches.

Sometimes, it can get too much. It's too time-consuming to check search terms every day, but checking it too infrequently, you face hundreds and thousands of search terms with no way of going through them all.

Since I don't check search terms frequently, I came up with a technique to work with a large search terms report. This post is for those whom, like myself, have scratched their head wondering if there's any way to comb through rows and rows of search terms and understand every searcher's intent.

Before I get to the step-by-step guide, take a step back and imagine looking at a keyword and the search query that triggered it. As you look at the association, how do you determine if the keyword did its job right being triggered for that particular search term? The answer is in intent.

Pamella Neely at SEMrush did an excellent job explaining how you can spot intent in each search term. “Each search query is not just empty words,” she says. “It holds an elusive but critical intent behind it.”

The key is finding the word within a search term that signal intent, because the intent is what determines if someone will convert or not. Looking for the intent keyword in each line is a lot easier than evaluating every word. Let’s see what I mean with an example below.

blue hats for free (4)

free yellow hats (3)

green hats free giveaway (4)

buy one get one free red hat (7)

free coupons for yellow hats (5)

There are 23 words in the five search terms and free appears in every line. What if the search terms were dissected and the words were counted? Free would be at the top of the list.

While all the search terms may point in the same direction - I want free stuff - because the search terms have different modifiers and order, they appear in separate lines. This is the biggest difficulty working with a large volume of search terms; there are countless ways to how people search. Although this example lists similar search terms together, in an actual search terms report, they could be anywhere in a list of thousands of rows. Also, if we don’t know what we are looking for, how are we going know where it is?

Here’s a guide on how you can quickly find these intent keywords in a large search terms report.

Step 1: Download a search terms report in the Keywords Tab.

Make sure the date range is wide enough for a report to have a large volume. Otherwise, it’s more efficient to work in the platform and make changes directly.

Step 2: Copy the search terms and paste them on to a single column in a new tab

TIP: Click the column heading to select the entire column.

Step 3: Select all rows below the heading

Select A2 and follow the instruction on the image to select all occupied cells in Column A.

Step 4: Separate every word in all of the search terms

Go to the Data tab and click on Text to Columns. Select Delimited and then “Space”. This indicates that white spaces are where splits will occur.

Step 5: Use a macro to put all the words into a single column

We are going to use a macro that moves all delimited words to right below the last occupied cell in Column A. If you don’t see the Developer Tab, follow this guide to enable it.

Copy and paste the following macro (Source: MrExcel):

Sub test()

Dim LR As Long, i As Long

For i = 2 To 4

LR = Cells(Rows.Count, i).End(xlUp).Row

Range(Cells(1, i), Cells(LR, i)).Copy Destination:=Cells(Rows.Count, 1).End(xlUp).Offset(1)

Next i

Columns("B:Z").Delete

End Sub

Make sure the macro is pasted only on the sheet that has the search terms.

Save the file in the Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook format (*.xlsm).

Step 6: Create a pivot table

Make sure the range includes the entire column (A:A). Filter out (blank), numbers and common words like prepositions in the pivot table and sort the table in descending order from largest to smallest.

And there you have it. This table lists every word in the search terms report separately. When you consider that it’s only one or two words that signal the intent of a search, you can really see the value of arranging all the words like this.

Personally, I’ve used this method to add negative keywords more often that I’ve used it to add keywords. Because I can set the match type to be phrase, adding just a couple of irrelevant negative keywords ensures that I’m blocking all possible variations that include those words.

Conclusion

Users vary a lot in how they search and it can get very overwhelming trying to digest every search term in its entirety. This method will help you find just handful of overarching words that are roots of many different variations. Of course, some queries could lose their meaning when dissected this way and you shouldn’t use this every time you look at a search terms report. Think of the method as an occasional in-depth review.

Keywords in paid search platforms are probably the most important element in your campaign. Think of it this way, even if you have not so good ad copies and a landing page, having all the right keywords could get you some conversions; conversion rate may not be high, but it will still be higher than 0. If you have zero relevant keywords, but the best ad copies and landing page, you won’t get any conversion. This is how important keywords are. Search funnels, customer’s online journeys varying in lengths and complexity, all start with a search. Keyword selection is like picking the paths that you think your customers will travel. It’s important to frequently check that you are on the right paths.

Avoiding Script Timeouts - Part 3

2015-05-25T13:11:00.000+01:00

If you've done absolutely all you can to speed up your scripts but they still time out now and again it may not matter. Depending upon what your script does, if it completes 90% or so of the required actions on a regular basis that may be enough but there's a couple of things you can do to make the best of this situation even if you can't solve the speed issues.

Use a sort order

If you're working to change Keyword positions or optimise for performance it's a good idea to use a sort order to ensure the most important elements are processed first in the script. In this way if the script does time out you should have hit the bulk of these most important elements already. For example, if you're optimising for performance you'll likely want to sort by Cost descending so that the elements with the biggest spend get optimised first. You can do this simply in your selector using the OrderBy method:

var campSelector = AdWordsApp.campaigns()
.OrderBy("Cost DESC")
.get();

You can order by any of the same columns you can use in the Condition methods so for example, CTR (note, of course, that in scripts this is written as "Ctr"), AveragePosition, Impressions and so on.

Once you're ordering by some metric, if you want to cover your whole set of elements even if the script times out, you can consider changing this sort order every now and again. So, for example, you could change the sort order to ascending just for Monday and Thursday, as follows:

var d = new Date();
var theDay = d.getDay();
// day "0" is Sunday
var sortOrder = (theDay == 1 || theDay == 4)? "ASC" : "DESC";
var campSelector = AdWordsApp.campaigns()
.OrderBy("Cost " + sortOrder)
.get();

In this way, twice a week your script will run in the "reverse" direction so you should pick up any elements that are frequently missed when it times out before reaching them. You can, of course, change how often you do this just by editing the day choices.

Check the time

Time outs can be most annoying when the last thing the script does is write results to a spreadsheet, send an email or perform some other final action. If the script times out this final action won't happen so you could end up with incomplete data or lacking notifications. Fortunately, there's a solution to this too.

The AdWordsApp object has a useful method called "getExecutionInfo()" that has a method itself called "getRemainingTime()". Using these methods you can check how long there is to run (in seconds) before the script times out so if you check this figure frequently you can anticipate a time out and force the final action to happen early. For example:

if(AdWordsApp.getExecutionInfo().getRemainingTime < 45) {

// code to exit looping and jump to final action

}

So if there's less than 45 seconds remaining, you can jump out of any loops and force the final action. How you do this will depend upon the coding but it's usually fairly simple.

Whether a log of an incomplete run is useful is of course dependent upon what you're doing, but even a partial report is often more useful than nothing at all (and you could adjust the reporting to show that it's partial).

I hope you find these tips useful!

Avoiding Script Timeouts - Part 2

2015-05-18T08:00:00.000+01:00

So, you've done your very best, but that wonderful script that's going to make your life so much easier and your clients so much happier is still timing out every time it runs. What can you do?

If you're already selecting only the elements you need and your script is as fast as it can be, there's really only one option to allow scripting to process the entire intended scope - you need to split the process up into smaller chunks. At the time of writing, AdWords Scripts can run as often as once per hour so there is the opportunity to run the same script up to 24 times per day or 12 hours of run time. If you can't address your entire scope in 12 hours you need to go back to the drawing board!

So, here are some options for splitting up your intended scope:

#1 - Use Labels

Labels are really useful in scripting since they're a dead easy and quick way to identify elements you want to be addressed by the script. Let's say you have 20 Campaigns you want to process and your script is timing out before it's finished the 7th Campaign so you're guessing you need to run the script 4 times to be absolutely sure. Simply apply four Labels, for example "Block_1", "Block_2", etc. to the Campaigns in blocks of 5 (or as appropriate so they have roughly the same "load") then use a condition in your Campaign selector as follows:

.withCondition("LabelNames CONTAINS_ANY ['Block_1']")

When the script runs it will only process the Campaigns with the Label "Block_1". Run the script 3 more times using the appropriate Labels and you're done.

I'll describe how to do this automatically later, but let's move on to another option.

#2 - Set limits

If you're addressing a large Account it's likely you've got a spread of performance metrics across the elements you're looking to process so you could use conditions to split the scripts up, for example:

.withCondition("Impressions > 1000")

(don't forget you'll need a DateRange condition as well). This option can be useful where the time that the script runs is important. You may want to ensure your biggest spenders, for example, are processed first in a day and this becomes increasingly important the more runs you need to make. If, for example, you need the script to run 10 times before it addresses the whole scope, even if you start at 1am you'll still be into the working day before the last elements are processed so using this sort of condition can ensure the most important ones are done first.

#3 - Use Labels (again)

Another use of Labels is in marking elements are "processed". So, if you were running your script against Keywords you could apply the Label "Processed" to each Keyword you complete and use a selector with the line:

.withCondition("LabelNames CONTAINS_NONE ['Processed']")

in this way, each time the script runs it'll only work on the Keywords not already processed. The only real downsides to this method are that you need to use another script to remove these processed Labels before each new "day" of script running and unless you also label Campaigns/Ad Groups your script could be inefficient as it searches Campaigns where all the Keywords are already done.

OK, so there's three options for splitting, but how do you get the script to run more than once? You could use a number of individual scripts pre-set with their conditions and running at different hours, but that's not very efficient and makes it harder to edit the script (since you have to make sure you make exactly the same edits to each one). I prefer to use systems based upon the hour of the day and just have the same script run every hour.

For example, the following script snippet will return the hour of the day (in your Account time zone):

var theHour = new Date(Utilities.formatDate(new Date(), AdWordsApp.currentAccount().getTimeZone(), 'MMM dd,yyyy HH:mm:ss')).getHours();

If you've used a Label naming convention like the one I have above, you can then build your required Label name using the following:

var labelName = "Block_" + theHour;

So, in your script, you might have the following:

function main() {
var theHour = new Date(Utilities.formatDate(new Date(), AdWordsApp.currentAccount().getTimeZone(), 'MMM dd,yyyy HH:mm:ss')).getHours();
if(theHour > 0 && theHour < 5) {
var labelName = "Block_" + theHour;
doProcess(labelName);
}
}

function doProcess(labelName) {
var campIter = AdWordsApp.campaigns()
.withCondition("LabelNames CONTAINS_ANY ['" + labelName + "']")
.get();
}

Set that script to run every hour and it will only process the Account in the scripts that run at 1am, 2am, 3am and 4am and will automatically run on the Campaigns with the appropriate Labels.

You can extend this use of Labels and hours to many other situations so go have fun!

In the next post I'll look at some options that'll make the best use of a script you just can't stop timing out.

Avoiding Script Timeouts - Part 1

2015-05-12T11:24:00.001+01:00

Scripts are possibly the most useful tool for managing larger Accounts. Scripts can apply complex processes automatically and reliably across a large number of AdWords elements and allow you to concentrate on what you do best - marketing. However, ironically, when the Account is very large and/or the script complex, you may find your marvellous script consistently "times out". At the time of writing, scripts can only run for 30 minutes before automatically terminating; this obviously means there's the potential for an unknown percentage of your AdWords elements to remain unprocessed but it also often means important logging information is lost (as "final" logs are never reached).

This post will hopefully give you some pointers to ensure your scripts run as quickly as possible and the next will give you some options for dealing with scripts that simply cannot be made to run under 30 minutes. So, let's start with the tips:

#1 - Good structure

All programming benefits from a good structure and with AdWords scripts the structure can be particularly important in terms of run time. Most scripts will use some form of selector to fetch AdWords elements (Campaigns, Groups, Keywords, etc.) and then process them in some way but how you fetch these elements can have a big impact on how fast a script runs. Imagine each selector is like sending an office minion out of the building to get something from a local store; the more often you send that person out the more time it's going to take to complete your task. So, for example, if you want to work on Keywords, rather than selecting Campaigns, then iterating them to select Ad Groups, then iterating those to select Keywords, look for a method to select the Keywords you need in one selector. Labels are an excellent way to do this (and you could use another script to apply and/or remove the Labels, of course, running before your main one).

Don't forget things like Campaign and Ad Group names are accessible from Keyword objects so you don't need to iterate Campaigns just to retrieve their names for reporting.

As a rule of thumb, your selector should, as far as possible, select the objects you want to work upon directly and if you're not doing that, you should think about how you could.

#2 - Only select what you need

Make sure your selectors use conditions that ensure they return only the elements you need to work upon. One very common bad practice (in all programming/scripting) is to fetch a large dataset and then examine each returned element for suitability, discarding those that don't fit. For example, you may select all the Keywords in a Campaign, then use conditional statements to check whether those Keywords are enabled or if they have impressions, etc. It is much better practice (and far faster) to include these conditions in the original selector so if you want to work only on Keywords that are enabled, ensure you include these conditions in your selector:

.withCondition("Status = 'ENABLED'")
.withCondition("CampaignStatus = 'ENABLED'")
.withCondition("AdGroupStatus = 'ENABLED'")

If you want to check for clicks or impressions, you can do so, as long as you include a time range in the selector, e.g.

.withCondition("Impressions > 0")
.forDateRange("LAST_30_DAYS")

The same thinking can be applied to all other elements you might select; try to use the selector itself to define your returned objects rather than grabbing a huge bundle then spending ages throwing most of it away.

#3 - Use AdWords API reports

The many prebuilt reports in the API are much faster at retrieving AdWords elements than the normal selectors so where possible, use these reports. The process of using them within scripts is quite different from a selector but there are plenty of examples on the web and once you've used one, the process is similar for all. These reports aren't appropriate for all script uses but if you can use one, you should. See here for a list of available reports.

https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/reports

#4 - Watch your Logging

Logging is, of course, a vital part of scripting, especially in the development/testing stages but logging has a surprisingly big impact on run time, particularly when the logs are frequent and within a loop. Try to keep your logging to what is absolutely necessary and once you're sure the script is working correctly, consider whether you can remove any.

#5 - Keep loops clean

Avoid including statements within loops that don't need to be calculated in each iteration. For example, if you wanted to compare each Keyword's CTR against the average for an entire Campaign, you only need to calculate the Campaign average once, don't include that calculation inside the Keyword iterator. The script within a loop should be only that needed for the loop to operate correctly.

#6 - Check for "bloat"

It's very easy when writing script to check for certain conditions (average position vs ROAS or CTR vs number of conversions, etc.) to end up with several conditional statements. It's just as easy for the final version to end up with redundant conditions. Make sure all the tests/conditions you apply are unique and where they are, consider whether there's a quicker way to write the same set of conditions.

There are other tips for speeding up scripts that can be learned from the many online pages that teach speed improvement for JavaScript and while some can't be applied to AdWords scripts, most can and I'd recommend some quality time with Google search. You might try starting with a search on "improve javascript speed".

In the next post I'll look at what you can do if despite your best efforts the script still times out. Good luck!

Shopping Promo Rotation

2015-03-30T14:58:00.002+01:00

As we all know, Shopping Campaign Ads can - and should! - contain a short promotional text line to enhance their appeal. You can read up on it here. Promotional text can have a big impact on the performance of your Shopping Ads but how do you test different versions? Although Shopping Ad Groups allow you to create more than one Ad (and therefore more than one version of the promo text) there's currently no option to rotate these Ads or optimise them for conversions or clicks. I recently wanted to test various texts and came up with this solution, using Scripts, of course.

What does it do?
In this simple form the script attempts to replicate the "rotate evenly" setting available in regular Campaigns. Given any number of Ads in the Group, when the script runs it pauses any currently enable Ad then enables the one with the least number of impressions "today". Run once an hour, this should effectively rotate all your Shopping Ads throughout the day allowing you to examine their performance over a reasonable period of time.

Since the Ad chosen to be enabled is always the one with the least impressions, in theory the Ads should rotate in such a way that the same Ad isn't always shown at the same hour of the day, making the test a little more "even", though you could always experiment with programming in another randomising factor.

How do I choose the best Ad?
Once (if) you see a clear "winner" you can either simply remove the script schedule and ensure that winner is enabled, or you can remove the other Ads, it's up to you.

The code
Copy and paste the code below into a new Script, give it an appropriate name, authorise it then PREVIEW the script to check it works as expected.

Note that as provided, the Script will operate on all Shopping Campaigns in the Account. If you wish to limit which Campaigns it operates upon, you can enable either the name choice condition or the Label choice condition (by removing the // at the start of these lines). Note also that the script expects there to be at least two Ads in each Campaign.

Ideally I'd suggest scheduling the script to run every hour but you could also try just once a day or even once a week. Experiment!

As always, the script is provided with no guarantees and you should preview and test it thoroughly before use.

UPDATE: The code below now checks for multiple Ad Groups and uses only those enabled.

UPDATE: Now always rotates to a new Ad, regardless of impressions count of Ad currently showing.

// Shopping Ad Rotation Script (c) Jon Gritton 2015

TIME for balanced reporting on timepieces

2014-09-11T15:19:00.001+01:00

This article in this week's TIME magazine left me momentarily lost for words.

It was not the writing itself, or the vague predictions for the future, but simply that it completely ignores the existence of other wearable tech, or at least the online section of the article does, and that's what really matters since it is that version that will be shared around the Web. (You can read it here: http://goo.gl/ZLDMUE).

To read this article you would believe that until Apple's announcement of their Watch, no-one had ever seen wearable technology on the wrist. There had been no Pebble, no Sony, no Samsung Gear, no LG G Watch R and certainly no Moto 360 (and my apologies to the others I've missed).

Bear in mind we're talking here about a product that hasn't even been released yet, and is not scheduled to be sold until "early" 2015 (and we all know "early" has a very flexible definition).

With the Android OS having held the market share of smartphone devices (as at the time of writing, source: http://goo.gl/cXzFFq) it is hard to believe an article could focus so completely upon a device that not only doesn't currently exist in public, but when released is likely to be useful to a much smaller percentage of that market share.

Consider some of the claims:

"The Apple Watch is just the start.", from the front cover. Well, it's the start if you considering "the start" to be joining a race long after most of the other major competitors have already run three laps.

"This is new, and slightly unnerving." Again, no it isn't (new - it may be unnerving). The Pebble was released in January 2013, 18 months ago, but if we want to be true to the idea of "wearable computers on the wrist" we have to go all the way back to 1984, yes, 30 years ago, and the Seiko RC-1000 which, ironically, was compatible with both the Apple II and the IBM-PC. There have been many other devices built and proposed since then.

"The Apple watch represents a redrawing of the map that locates technology in one place and our bodies in another." I'm not even sure where to start here. This comment ignores not only the numerous other wrist devices, but the whole arena of medical technology implanted in the body, prosthetics, pacemakers, et al. It also ignores the plethora of for-purpose health monitoring equipment that has been strapped to athletes, amateur and professional alike, for countless years.

I am usually largely immune to the whole Apple bandwagon, but it would have been so simple to have written an article like this that presented a more balanced view of wearable tech and it's disappointing to see it in a magazine I used to trust for that balance and informed opinion. The Apple Watch, when it's eventually on sale, I have no doubt will be a very fine piece of technology, but please remember that it's not the first such device, not revolutionary, and really doesn't redraw any boundaries that weren't redrawn towards the end of the last century.

Please... check your checkout process!

2014-04-11T13:14:00.000+01:00

Many months ago I went to buy a fairly specialised piece of equipment online and found it out of stock. There are no other suppliers but luckily the site included an "email me when back in stock" option so I went with that and thought no more. Yesterday I finally received the "back in stock" email and flew to the website, all excited, credit card in hand. Yes, there it was and, astonishingly after so many months, it was still in my basket so, there's the big blue "Checkout" button and off we go!

Except we didn't "go". What actually happened was that I spent the next 10 minutes becoming increasingly (and alternately) amazed, frustrated and annoyed at what was quite simply the most laborious and tiresome checkout process I've ever seen. Here's what happened:

Me: Clicked "Checkout"
Site: You must login or register to complete the process.

Why? Why must I register to buy something from you? No sane high street store is going to let you get to the till with an expensive basket of their products then refuse to sell them unless you sign up to their newsletter. OK, but I really want this thing, and anyway, how hard can it be? So I'm looking at the login screen which asks for a username and password. Now, as I said, it's been months since I went to this site so I can't remember if I registered to do the "back in stock" thing and there's no clue on the screen what the username might be - is it my email or a name? Neither, infuriatingly, is there a "forgotten password" process. You can, apparently, reset your password but presumably that might require you knowing what your username was. Hopeless. I go ahead with a new registration, using my normal email, hoping that if that email is already in the system it'll warn me and there might be more options. No, apparently not, but at least I'm now registered and I'm back to the checkout page, still showing my basket.

Me: Clicked "Checkout"
Site: Your account is inactive, you must activate your account before you can checkout.

Seriously? OK, where's my email tab, yes, there's an email and a link to click. Clicked. Opens in a new tab and says I'm now active. The old tab is still showing the "account is inactive method" so...

Me: Click "Back". Clicked "Checkout".
Site: You must complete your profile information before you can checkout.

By now there is steam coming from my ears. There's a good chance this thing will be sold out again by the time I actually place the order. If this hadn't been the only supplier, and they weren't so darn scare, I'd have walked away ages ago. OK, first page of the modal dialogue asks me if I'm a company or personal buyer. Well, I'm a company, and I'm in the UK. Easy enough. Next page is all the usual name, address stuff, but also a box for VAT number. Now I've been using the web for a few years so I was able to guess - and guess I had to because there was no other indication - that the red bar to the right of VAT number means that the field is mandatory, which is odd, because not all UK companies are registered for VAT in fact a large proportion aren't. So, I wonder what happens if I leave that blank. No, no dice. No warning either, it just sits there with the "Next" button disabled. So, presumably if you're not VAT registered you have to buy personally, which would make it difficult for accounting purposes but no matter, I get past this.

Me: Clicked "Checkout".
Site: Presents a summary of my order. Hurrah! Hang on. Only at this point did the order display a further £35 of shipping and taxes - this on an item that only costs £85 (or appeared to). So, I could have gone through all the above and only then found out it was going to cost me £120 instead of the £85 it shows in the basket! But, I need it and I'm not giving up now so...

Me: Clicked "Checkout".
Site:
Me: Clicked "Checkout" (yeah, 'cos that's how computers work, if it didn't work first time it might second)
Site:
Me: (screaming) Why won't you do anything? What do you want now? Blood? A signed affidavit from the Prime Minister?

Then I notice in writing 1mm high, dark grey text on a light grey background "You must accept the Terms and Conditions to complete the sale". I check the box, really hard.

From this point on it all becomes very boring. I was offered PayPal which, of course, worked effortlessly and a few seconds later I had a confirmation.

The worst of it is, these people probably don't even know they have a problem. The nature of their products and their relative difficulty to obtain means the likes of me are prepared to cross lakes of fire to buy them but if this were a more readily available product I'd be surprised if they made any sales at all.

So, never underestimate the importance of a smooth and simple checkout process for ecommerce sites, it could be the difference between success and failure.

Check your Scripts when Using Shopping Campaigns...

2014-01-08T15:41:00.000+00:00

Google has recently confirmed that at present the new "Shopping" Campaign type is not included when using AdWords Scripts to iterate through Campaigns within an Account. If you run Scripts that examine Campaigns for reporting or control purposes you should check that the Script allows for this omission or you may see unexpected results.

Google is aware of the issue and a fix should be in place shortly. I'll post again when there is an update.

Make Time for Time Lag

2013-11-27T18:23:00.000+00:00

If you're an AdWords agency you'll be giving your customers regular reports on performance, and if you're tracking conversions, those reports will include conversion numbers and probably total conversion value. So, if you produce your reports monthly, do you run around frantically on the 1st of each month preparing a stack of reports then breath a sigh of relief when they're all emailed out?

If so, you may want to rethink your reporting process and perhaps make your 1st of the month a little less stressful from now on.

Sometimes a person will click an Ad, visit the website then buy the product advertised almost instantly but a lot of the time - and varying from business to business - this doesn't happen in such a rapid "one click -> visit -> buy" process. Certainly as product values increase the path to a decision to buy usually becomes longer; most of us are going to think a lot longer about buying something for $600 than we are something that's only $6. For these higher value - or simply more "thoughtful" purchases - the path to final conversion will most likely include multiple clicks and multiple visits over many days. Fortunately, AdWords has a handy report that'll show you exactly how long this path is for your Account; the Time Lag report, found under the Search Funnels section of the Conversions page.

Here's a shot taken from one of my Accounts, covering a period of the past three months:

The figures here are pretty hard to read so I'll pick out just the relevant bits. The report shows that 65% of conversions and almost 42% of the value of conversions happens within one day of first click, but of course that also means that 35% of conversions and 58% of the value happens more than one day after the first click. What's really scary here is that 23% of all conversion value occurs more than 8 days after first click and it's still 13% after 12 days. It's also interesting to note that the graph largely supports the concept that lower value items are purchased more quickly - the first 24 hours has 65% of conversions but only 42% of the value, suggesting these items tend towards the lower price range for this client with higher value items taking more than a day to convert.

So, if I'd prepared my report for this company on the 1st of the month, I am very likely to be missing conversions and value. In this particular case (a low volume/high value product) those few "missed" conversions could have a substantial impact on ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) for the reported month. In preparing this post I checked the above Account on the 1st November, then daily (or so) up to today. On the 1st, the Account reported 40 conversions for October. By the 7th November it was reporting 42 conversions, by the 15th, 43. OK, not a massive change, but one of those 3 "late" conversions was a sale that represented almost 15% of the conversion value for that month.

Don't forget these "missed" conversions will not appear in the report for the following month. AdWords attributes conversions to the date of first click so if the click happened in October but the actual final conversion occurred in November, a report for November will not show that conversion.

How important the Time Lag factor is to your own Accounts will depend upon their nature. I've seen Accounts where over 90% of conversions (number and value) occurred within 1 day of first click and 98% within 2 days; for Accounts like this preparing reports on the 7th or so of the month will probably be fine, but for Accounts with data similar to what I've shown above, I usually don't prepare reports until at least the 20th of the month. It's also a good idea to issue "quarterly" reports that allow for a much longer period. For example, I might prepare a Q3 report around now.

If you're using Analytics as your conversion tracking, then this issue is less troublesome since Analytics, by default, uses a last click Attribution Model. However, if you're looking at the data imported into AdWords you need to bear in mind data can be 48 hours or so delayed in transferring across so you're still not really safe reporting on the 1st.

So, if you're in the habit of producing monthly reports on the 1st, it might be an idea to re-examine some of the figures...

More Information on Conversion Tracking Reports

Video Doesn't Have To Be Epic

2013-10-25T17:23:00.000+01:00

I'm a big fan of video advertising - not so long ago I was making short films and music videos so that's perhaps not surprising - but I do truly believe that if a picture is worth a thousand words then video takes that principle and expands it immensely.

Whenever I suggest video as an advertising medium normally the first response I get is that it's far too expensive, time consuming and difficult to produce. (In fact, this is normally the second response - the first is usually laughter). However, the world of video has changed hugely in the last few years; even budget priced digital cameras can now shoot HD video in various formats and memory cards continue to drop in price making storage less of an issue. YouTube continues to become more mainstream - it's now the second largest search engine on the Internet - and consumers are becoming more familiar with using YouTube as a resource, more than just somewhere to look for music videos. So, it's certainly doesn't have to be expensive, but isn't it still time consuming and complex? No, not if you don't want it to be.

Here's a handful of video spots I've pulled from random searching. I don't know if any of these are actually being used as AdWords Ads (I suspect not) but they're all promotions and they're great examples of what's possible.

This first, from Criswell Chevrolet is a classic example of a simple, one-shot, straight to camera setup.

OK, so he stumbles on his lines a couple of times but for me that adds to the honesty and simplicity of the video. Anyone could produce something like this with any camera able to shoot video. I really like this.

This second is from the UK and is a little more ambitious but still a simple setup using (I think) just one camera and a handful of extras. (Warning - you may want to keep your hand near your volume control, this, and the next video can be quite loud...)

Even though there's a lot more going on here than in the first it's nothing that couldn't be done with a simple idea, some makeup and a few friends. This video would need editing to put together the various shots but most modern cameras include a suite of editing tools along with the product and some of them are really easy to use. Mind you, I'm not entirely sure I'd want to visit a pie shop like that...

This final video, also from the UK, is another step up. It may not look much more complex than the last, but there are some trickier video effects employed here and some thought to artistry. It's still probably only a single camera though and probably shot in a single afternoon (though editing would have taken longer). This does have a thumping sound track so watch those speakers again...

So, what's stopping you? Brainstorm an idea, grab a camera and go. You could be done by this time tomorrow!

Using Every Penny with Scripts

2013-09-25T15:42:00.000+01:00

Recently I was asked to oversee an Account with a small fixed budget and, as sometimes happens, I found that although the budget was small it wasn't always being fully spent each day. Juggling with the daily budgets of each Campaign (as described in my previous post) wasn't an option because there really wasn't enough budget to go around but I didn't want to "lose" all the unspent budget. While browsing through the Scripts documentation I came across the provided solution for Flexible Budgets. This solution is designed to manage a fixed spend for a single Campaign running in a single period, but it looked ripe for adaptation to solve the problem of this small budget Account.

I've adapted the Script so that it attempts to spend an entire monthly budget across specified Campaigns, recalculating their daily budgets each time the script runs (ideally very early in the morning, e.g. 1am) to take into account the spend so far, the number of days remaining in the month and the percentage share each Campaign should receive of that remaining budget. The script makes use of Labels to a) identify which Campaigns should be affected by the script and b) to define a percentage share.

For example, lets say you have three Campaigns A, B and C and a daily budget of $20 for September, a total monthly spend of $600. At 1am on the 21st September these Campaigns should have spent $400 (20 days * $20) but they've actually only spent $280 so there is $320 remaining to spend in 10 days - a total budget of $32 per day. To use the script below, you'd label each of these Campaigns with one label named "FlexBudget" and another defining a percentage for each Campaign, let's say we give A 50%, B 30% and C 20% (you should apply Labels without % signs - just the number). When the script runs in this situation at 1am on the 21st September it would set the following budgets:

Campaign A - $16
Campaign B - $9.60
Campaign C - $6.40

which, if all is well, should equal $32!

This script will only be useful if you're working with a fixed budget per month and only when there's usually "unspent" monies and only when you can't clearly predict spend patterns for each Campaign but if it's not directly useful, it may give you ideas for modifications.

Note that you must label each Campaign you wish to be affected with "FlexBudget" and a "percentage" Label, e.g. 35. If your percentages don't add up to 100 (either more or less) the script will still run but your spend won't be accurate so take care adding up the numbers. The Script does include the option to "ignore" other labels (line 40) so take care here as well.

As always, you should check the operation of the script with a preview before running or scheduling and should check the results after running. You'll probably want to adjust the percentage figures over time and to do this you'll need to create new Labels - a small pain but Labels are easy to create and delete.

Complete Script as follows:

/* Modified Flexible Budget Script
** @param (number) TOTAL_BUDGET - the total sum to be spent in a single month
**
** Schedule to run around 1am (before "day" starts)
*/

var TOTAL_BUDGET = 600;

var d = new Date();
var thisMonth=d.getMonth();
var thisYear=d.getFullYear();
// DAYS_SO_FAR is -1 because "today" hasn't happened yet
var DAYS_SO_FAR = d.getDate() - 1;
var TOTAL_DAYS = daysInMonth(thisMonth + 1, thisYear);

var START_DATE = new Date(thisYear, thisMonth, 1);
var END_DATE = new Date(thisYear, thisMonth, TOTAL_DAYS);

function main() {
setNewBudget(calculateBudgetEvenly, TOTAL_BUDGET, START_DATE, END_DATE);
}

function setNewBudget(budgetFunction, totalBudget, start, end) {
var costSoFar = 0;
var campaignsToSet = [];
var campaigns = AdWordsApp.campaigns()
//operate only on Campaigns labelled with "FlexBudget"
.withCondition('LabelNames CONTAINS_ANY ["FlexBudget"]')
.get();
while(campaigns.hasNext()) {
var campaign=campaigns.next();
var thisCost = campaign.getStatsFor(dateToString(start), dateToString(end)).getCost();
costSoFar += thisCost;
campaignsToSet.push(campaign);
}
for(var i=0;i
var thisCampaign=campaignsToSet[i];
cLabels=thisCampaign.labels()
// Ensure only the "percentage" Label is selected - you may need to add others if you use them
.withCondition('Name NOT_IN ["FlexBudget"]')
.get();
var percentage = cLabels.next().getName();
var newBudget = budgetFunction(costSoFar, totalBudget, percentage);
thisCampaign.getBudget().setAmount(newBudget);
}
}

function calculateBudgetEvenly(costSoFar, totalBudget, percentage) {
var daysRemaining = (TOTAL_DAYS - DAYS_SO_FAR);
//set budget based upon percentage Label
var budgetRemaining = (totalBudget - costSoFar)*(percentage / 100);
if (daysRemaining <= 0) {
return budgetRemaining;
} else {
return budgetRemaining / daysRemaining;
}
}

function daysInMonth(month, year) {
//returns number of days in a given month of a given year
return new Date(year, month, 0).getDate();
}

function dateToString(date) {
return date.getFullYear() + zeroPad(date.getMonth() + 1) + zeroPad(date.getDate());
}

function zeroPad(n) {
if (n < 10) {
return '0' + n;
} else {
return '' + n;
}
}

Happy Scripting!

Balancing Budgets with Scripts

2013-09-11T14:09:00.000+01:00

We all know that AdWords budgets should be led by your Return on Investment. If your AdWords Campaigns are returning a net profit you should be spending as much as is possible so that all your Campaigns hit a 100% Impression Share to maximise the chance of conversions. However in some cases, for one reason or another, a client may request that you adhere to a fixed budget per month so it's possible you could be faced with multiple Campaigns, all of which are "Limited by Budget". So, if you can't give the Campaigns the budget they deserve and you can't persuade the client to increase the budget, what can you do?

I was faced with this situation recently when building a new Account structure for a client. They have a wide range of products and even just selecting the top five best sellers left me with all of the Campaigns limited by budget. No matter how I juggled their allocated portions of the budget, no matter how I reduced CPC or paused Keywords I couldn't give any of the Campaigns a decent share without reducing the others to a budget too small to be worth running. Since this was a new structure, all I really needed to do was give each Campaign a fair chance to perform over a period. I considered using Automated Rules to change budgets on a daily basis but you can only do this on specific days: I could give CampaignA a high budget on a Monday, CampaignB a high budget on a Tuesday and so on, but this wouldn't test CampaignA's potential performance on the other days of the week. What I wanted was an automatic way to rotate the "high budget allocation" evenly through all the Campaigns over the course of a month. By the end of that period, I should have enough data to know which Campaigns were performing and be able to apply budgets more sensibly.

Scripts and Google Docs to the rescue!

One of the most powerful features of AdWords Scripts is that they can access a Docs Spreadsheet and read data from the cells therein. So I prepared a spreadsheet with my Campaigns in the first column and the days of the month (1-31) to the right. In each cell I allocated a budget for the day for each Campaign. Using this system I was able to say that CampaignA has a high budget on certain dates rather than specific days of the week. As the month progresses (so long as your changes aren't on a 7-day cycle!) the Campaigns should receive their "high budget allocation" on different days of the week.

The full code for this script is at the bottom of this post, along with a link to a spreadsheet template you can use.

Once you've grasped the idea of using external spreadsheets, other opportunities come to mind. You could replicate the idea of varying budgets by day of the week. This is possible in Automated Rules but it's a lot easier to edit and set up the budgets when you can see them all laid out in a spreadsheet. You could pause or enable Campaigns, Groups or Keywords depending on any schedule you fancy, again, much more easily read through a spreadsheet than by rules and you can run Scripts as many times a day as you like.

There are some great ideas on the Scripting Documentation pages and the Preview Option makes it easy (and safe) to test your ideas before you apply them to your Account.

So, here's the full script for my "High Budget Allocation". You are welcome to copy this script and use it or modify it as you see fit but please bear in mind I hold no responsibility for any actions you take and you must always test the results before applying them to your Account. Scripts are very powerful and issue no warnings so it's vital you test thoroughly before running live and check your Account immediately after a few test runs to make sure the results are what you expect.

function main() {
var NUMCAMPAIGNS=7; //this number needs to be +1 on your actual # of Campaigns
var spreadsheetUrl = "SPREADSHEETURL"; //enter your spreadsheet URL here.
var budgetSheet = SpreadsheetApp.openByUrl(spreadsheetUrl).getActiveSheet();
var range = budgetSheet.getRange(1, 1, NUMCAMPAIGNS, 35);
var values = range.getValues(); // this is now a 2d array with the data in it.
//get the day of the month as an integer and add 1 for first two columns offset
var d = new Date();
var dayMonth = d.getDate();
var chooseDay=Number(dayMonth)+1;
setBudgets(values,chooseDay,NUMCAMPAIGNS);
}

function setBudgets(values,chooseDay,NUMCAMPAIGNS) {
//loops througn values (spreadsheet rows) setting Campaign Budgets
//NOTE: only lists *changes* - if the budget is already at the specified value it isn't set.
var i=1;
while(i<(NUMCAMPAIGNS)) {
var campaignName=values[i][0];
var budget=values[i][chooseDay];
var campaign = AdWordsApp.campaigns().
withCondition('CampaignName = "' + campaignName + '"').
get().
next();
campaign.setBudget(budget);
i++;
}
}

A template spreadsheet you can use is here. Please make a copy of this spreadsheet within your own Drive and then make sure you share it with the Account running AdWords. You'll need to replace the Campaign names with your own and set your own budgets before testing.

It's too early to tell if my experiment will work, but at least I had fun making this script.

AdWords Made for Sharing

2013-08-07T23:28:00.000+01:00

Tucked away in the left-hand column of your AdWords interface is a link to the Shared Library. You may know it's there, you may have visited it, but have you done so recently? There's all sorts of toys in there that can make managing a multi-Campaign Account much easier.

Shared Ads
The Shared Ads section allows you to create text Ads that you can assign to multiple Ad Groups. You create a "list", give it a sensible name, and then create Ads just as you would within an Ad Group. Once you've created your Ads you then pick which Ad Groups you'd like to use these Ads and you're done!

Who would use it? Shared Ads are great when you've got multiple Campaigns sharing the same Keywords and Ads, for example when you've split Campaigns up for Location purposes but they're still effectively the same. Using Shared Ads in these Campaigns allows you to make changes only in one place and know for sure that they've been copied to all the various Campaigns.

Campaign Negative Keywords
Almost any Account is likely to have some Keywords that could be used as negatives in every single Campaign and probably a lot more negative Keywords that should be used in more than one Campaign and that's where Campaign Negative Keywords come in handy. Just like Shared Ads above, you create a list, give it a sensible name, fill it with negative Keywords and then you choose which Campaigns you want this list to apply to. Just like Shared Ads, this gives you one central place to maintain your negative Keywords and the reassurance they're being applied to all the right Campaigns.

Who would use it? Everyone, anyone!

Campaign Placement Exclusions
Campaign Placement Exclusions work in almost exactly the same way as Campaign Negative Keywords so I'm going to be real lazy and just say that all the text above applies in the same way, just pretend it says "Placement Exclusions" instead of "Negative Keywords".

Who would use it? Anyone with Placements they want to exclude from multiple Campaigns.

Bid Strategies
Bid Strategies allows you to define bidding strategies such as Enhanced CPC, CPA, Ad Position and Maximising for Clicks and then apply them to the Keyword or Group level. They're a great idea, although it's a real shame the ECPC and CPA strategies can only be applied at the Ad Group or Campaign level - I would have thought these would be ideal for applying to individual, high performance Keywords within Groups, but you'll just have to split them out on their own.

Who would use them? Probably for "mature" Accounts only where you're really getting into the tight detail of performance, but they're a useful tool to understand for anyone.

Budgets

Shared Budgets allows you to specify a budget and then share it between two or more Campaigns. It's that simple. The Campaigns run and take their money from the shared pot.

Who'd use it? Shared Budgets are probably only useful in the short term since any established Campaign should really have a well-defined spending pattern you'll want to control individually but they are great for when you're splitting one Campaign into multiple copies - again, for example when you split by location or time or to separate Campaigns for any other reason. When you split a Campaign like this it can be difficult to estimate how the original budget needs to be split to fuel the new versions. With Shared Budgets you can just create a new Shared Budget that has the same value as the old single budget (or probably a little higher is a good idea) and then apply it to the new Campaigns. After a period you'll be able to see the trend for spending and revert the Campaigns to single budgets.

Audiences
The Audiences section is where you define and manage your Remarketing lists and audiences. If you're not already using Remarketing and haven't applied your tag yet, do it now because you will want to use Remarketing in the future and the sooner you apply your tag, the bigger and more useful your list will be when you come to use it. Remarketing is a big topic in itself so you'll probably want to read through this next:

Remarketing Overview (AdWords Help Content)

Who'd use it? You may already be using Audiences in your Display or Search Ads but everyone should be at least trying Remarketing so look at this today!

Analytics and the Ready-Made AdWords Audience

2013-07-03T13:08:00.000+01:00

OK, it sounds a little like a Roald Dahl book but it's actually a great way for new advertisers to hit the ground running.

One of the toughest parts of a new AdWords Account is in building the structure and testing the performance. It can be a costly period as to test effectively you really need to accept that many of the tests are going to be less than ideal. When you have a big pot of cash you can dive into this isn't such a problem but when the margins are very tight it can make starting up a new AdWords Account very difficult as the advertiser is caught in a classic chicken and egg situation: They need AdWords to generate cash from their business but they don't have the cash to get AdWords up and running properly (or to even know if it will be cost-effective). My friend at IShopCandy is in this terrible position, so what can she do?

Enter Analytics to the rescue. Assuming your website has been running Analytics for a decent period, and that you've enabled support for Display advertising (it's a setting in your profile - check here) you can build yourself a list of likely AdWords targets for free!

The problem with a new AdWords Account, as I've said above, is that a lot of the testing is about finding the right audience, the people that actually want to buy from your business. The long slow way is to pick and choose Keywords, Placements, Topics and so on and then evaluate performance over time. With Analytics though you can already see all the people who have expressed a strong interest in your site, who perhaps have already bought from you before (if repeated sales are likely with your product).

All you need do is set up a handful of simple Goals in Analytics and ensure your Account is linked to AdWords and a set of remarketing lists will magically appear in your AdWords Shared Library under "Audiences". You can then use these lists as the target for a Remarketing Campaign in AdWords, safe in the knowledge that the people seeing your Ads have a definite interest in your site.

OK, it's not guaranteed wealth, but it's a better start than nothing.

What Goals could you use? I tend to use three basic Goals - a certain number of pages visited, a certain time on site (measures of visitor engagement) and another simply based upon actual transactions (previous buyers). You will also have access to the "Main List" - everyone who's visited your site but I wouldn't use this unless you have a very good conversion rate from organic & direct visits. I'd use the engagement lists for one Campaign (trying to tempt a sale) and the previous buyers list for another Campaign tempting them back for more.

Of course, you still need some cash to put into AdWords and you need to create attractive and compelling Ads, and your site needs to be effective and user-friendly; Analytics can't do it all for you. But it can perhaps give you a bit of a shove...

Read more about creating Goals

Balancing Keywords & Budget

2013-06-10T17:15:00.000+01:00

We're so used to thinking about Keywords in terms of their CPC, CPM, CPA or whatever that it's very easy to forget their impact on overall Account budget. Keywords and budget are intimately and, so long as your Keywords are effective, you can't change one without impacting the other. It's easiest to understand this with a very simple situation.

Imagine you have an Account with one Campaign, one Ad Group and one Keyword. In our mythical world, there are always exactly 1000 searches that could match against this Keyword, and your Ad always produces a CTR of 10%. Each click always costs $1 so your daily budget of $100 always gives you 100 clicks. Now imagine if you introduce another Keyword with the same performance figures, but the daily budget remains the same. You now have two Keywords which, between them, could potentially match against 2000 searches and accrue 200 clicks at a cost of $200, but your daily budget is only $100 so Google has to compromise and show an Ad for each Keyword match only about 50% of the time when it could.

This probably sounds very obvious, doesn't it? But why then do we so often see the following situations being presented to us?

An AdWords user has added a number of new Keywords - sometimes an entirely new Ad Group - to a Campaign without changing the budget, and is asking why they're now getting fewer clicks and/ or sales from their existing Groups that are "unchanged".
An AdWords user has over 10,000 Keywords in their Account and runs a test of AdWords performance with a budget of just $10 a day.

The real world isn't, of course, anywhere near as simplistic as the model I used in the example above, but if anything the added complexity of varying CPCs, automated optimisations, multiple Ad Variations, etc. only make it more likely that adding Keywords without changing budget will affect overall performance.

#1 above is a particularly interesting example as it could well be the cause of what might otherwise seem to be an inexplicable loss of performance. Let's say you were running an Account with 5 Ad Groups and 100 Keywords in total. The Account makes a reasonable Net profit from AdWords so you decide to add another 3 Ad Groups and 60 Keywords or so, and increase the budget a little. This sounds very reasonable, but if you've not increased the budget enough you could well be taking clicks away from the other established Groups and limiting their effectiveness. We've seen more than one post in the AdWords Community where users have seen a drop in performance with "no apparent reason". The danger here is of course particularly high where newly introduced Keywords have a high search volume compared to existing ones, but don't convert particularly (or at least as) well.

#2 is quite fun when you see someone proposing a new Account structure that uses millions of Keywords and you kindly and carefully point out that a valid test of such an Account would probably require a minimum of a six-figure daily budget. Maybe even $1 for every Keyword, perhaps much much more. Per day.

#2 is less fun when you try to explain that having a lot of Keywords and a low budget is actually harmful to the Keywords that could work at that budget. Ask yourself right now how many Keywords you have in your Account that are just "using up" valuable daily budget when you have others that could use it to convert into sales.

So what should you do to add new Keywords?

There's no magic solution, unfortunately: Being aware that you'll probably need to adjust your budget is half the battle won, the other half is mostly a matter of sensible judgement, use of the Traffic Estimator and Keyword Tool (soon to be married as the "Keyword Planner") and, as always, making sure you monitor performance closely after any changes.

So, if you've added a bunch of Keywords recently and have been scratching your head trying to work out why that meant your sales went down, take a look at your budget...

Budget Decisions

2013-05-29T12:15:00.000+01:00

I see a lot of questions that include such phrases as "... how much does it cost... " and "... I can't afford... " and "... how much should I spend... " and so on. Budgeting for AdWords is a pretty common topic but most questions hover around the idea that advertising is a cost, a capital outlay that is a drain on income or cashflow. Although it will probably be necessary to have an initial budget that can be used as a loss-leader, ongoing advertising costs should be examined simply in terms of their return to the business.

I've tried to summarise this in the following diagram.

Simply put, if you understand the value of your advertising, your budget should be controlled primarily by that value. If you don't and cannot, your budget should only be what you can afford but you should always aim to measure your return on investment as this is the only true way to gauge advertising success.

Fewer Marks Still for Marks & Spencer

2013-05-21T18:04:00.000+01:00

Back in 2009 Interflora Inc and Interflora British Unit began legal action against the use of their trademarked term "Interflora" as a Keyword for AdWords Ad Campaigns used by Marks & Spencer. The use of this term meant that if someone searched on Google for "Interflora", an Ad by Marks & Spencer for their own flower delivery services could appear right next to an Ad from Interflora themselves.

Oh, the irony! A search for "high court rulings interflora" brings up a fine example of the very problem being debated (left).

Note: this image was taken today and may not be representative of any Ads examined in the case itself. If this image is representative, it seems pretty clear to me that the second Ad is for M&S; their website appears twice and M&S also three times...

This use of competitor trademark terms is not prohibited by AdWords Policies and the practice is quite common among advertisers. It is therefore something of a shock to here today (21st May 2013) that the UK High Court has ruled in favour of Interflora and has ordered Marks & Spencer to pay damages.

This ruling, should it stand, is likely to have an enormous impact on the worldwide advertising community given that the practice is so common. Perhaps more worryingly, parts of the judges ruling appears equally applicable to virtually any selection of Ads on a common theme:

“The average reasonably well-informed and reasonably observant internet user is not particularly technically literate, does not know precisely how AdWords operates and is not aware of the issues.”

He concluded that the “M&S advertisements which are the subject of Interflora’s claim did not enable reasonably well-informed and reasonably attentive internet users to ascertain whether the service referred to in the advertisements originated from [M&S or Interflora].

“On the contrary, as at 6 May 2008, a significant proportion of the consumers who searched for ‘interflora’ and the other signs, and then clicked on M&S’s advertisements displayed in response to those searches, were led to believe, incorrectly, that M&S’s flower delivery service was part of the Interflora network”.

It will be interesting to see if this ruling "sticks" and how it affects both Google's own Policies and the future of AdWords in general.

Tackling Tablet Traffic

2013-05-08T15:24:00.001+01:00

Enhanced Campaigns have brought a number of great new features like location based bid adjustments, Group-level sitelinks and mobile specific Ads but it's what's been taken away that has many advertisers up in arms. At the time of writing it is not possible to run a Search Campaign that doesn't have at least the potential to show on Desktops and Tablets. This restriction obviously affects advertisers who were previously targeting only mobile devices but it also affects those who were targeting Computers (Desktops) and not tablets and it's these Accounts in which I'm most interested.

Let's look at a fictional Campaign where some lengthy historical data shows that while the Campaign has a healthy conversion rate and a positive ROI (Return on Investment) the vast majority - perhaps all - of those conversions and that return come from Computers. You look at a segmented view showing devices and can see that 30% of your monthly budget is being spent on tablet clicks but you have no recorded conversions for tablets. What do you do?

You really have two choices. You can rant and rave at people you meet in the street, your pets, your partner and anyone else that appears to be listening, that not being able to remove tablets from your Campaigns is killing your business. Or you can ask why your tablet traffic does not appear to convert.

There are some specific circumstances where a tablet would not be a suitable conversion platform but in many cases a tablet user can be considered to be very similar to a desktop user. There's plenty of evidence to show that tablet use is increasing at a prodigious rate - I have more than one friend who no longer use their desktop machines but spend all their surfing time on tablets. I myself now spend most of my leisure browsing (what little there is of it!) on my Nexus 7. So let's consider some reasons why tablets don't convert.

#1 Are you sure they're not converting? It's an easy mistake to make to look simply at the "Conversions" column in AdWords and see a big fat 0. But is this accurate? Many advertisers overlook the importance of Search Funnels. Not all conversions happen from a single click. Some convert from an AdWords click followed by an organic search, others from multiple AdWords clicks or a combination of these options. It's entirely possible that while your visitors are not converting on their tablet devices, these Ad impressions and clicks may be "assists" for a later conversion on another device. It's not hard to imagine someone searching for a product while away from home, finding your site and the product they want, but not completing the sale then for any number of reasons. They may well come home and complete the sale on their Computer so it looks like another sale for the desktop but in fact it started with the tablet.

#2 Is your site tablet friendly? At the very basic level this means can your site be viewed reasonably on a tablet device, does it resize properly, and is the navigation finger/touch friendly? There's one site I use regularly that on a tablet has an important drop-down menu displayed as a millimetre wide down-arrow right at the far right edge of a tablet screen - you need a cocktail stick to click it - so it's worth checking that it doesn't just look alright but is actually usable. Make sure your dialogue boxes position correctly and can be moved to accommodate screen keyboards (has anyone tried to change the date range on Analytics via a tablet? You end up chasing the calendar picker across the screen).

Think about things like checkboxes or "fly-out" menus that may not work properly (or easily) on a tablet.

More importantly, does your site offer useful features on a tablet view? Along with many other commentators I'd thoroughly recommend creating a website specifically tailored to mobile/tablet devices so the visitor is not just looking at a smaller version of the desktop site. However, if you do this, make sure you don't take things away from your customers.

I use a well-known, very rapid, accounting package online for my accounts and I'm generally very happy with it. Better yet, apparently, if you access your books via a tablet, you see a mobile specific site with big bright buttons to click. Great! The problem is that this mobile version lacks many of the most useful features of the full site and to rub salt into the wounds, there's no way you can view the full site! There's no link to the full site and it appears to ignore requests via Chrome to display as a desktop. It's a classic example of good intentions leading to a poor experience so don't make the same mistake.

#3 Is your site just too slow? Although a lot of tablet users may be on reasonably fast connections, many may not, especially in public areas where a single connection may be shared by many people. Make sure your key pages are as fast to load as they can possibly be, don't weight them down with images or videos.

#4 Are you making checkout too hard? Filling in forms with a screen keyboard can be tiresome so make sure you don't make it harder than it needs to be. If your customer details are recorded following a sale, offer the ability to pre-load addresses and other details via a simple login. If you must use a new form each time, make sure completed information is retained if there's an error or the customer moves away from that page.

So don't just throw your (or your clients') toys out of the pram because you can no longer exclude tablets from your Campaigns. Consider what you could be doing with that traffic instead, it may be more worthwhile.

Location, Location, Location Bid Adjustments

2013-04-01T16:09:00.002+01:00

With all the furore over the changes to device targeting in Enhanced Campaigns, it's easy to overlook the improvements in targeting that have happened elsewhere within your AdWords Account. One of the most fun to explore is the ability to alter bids by specific location targets and it's something that's particularly useful when you target the US.

Let's say you sell those good old Widgets and you only ship to the US. Naturally your AdWords Campaigns are targeting the US but because you're a good manager you understand that performance varies from state to state so you want to control what you spend by state. Before Enhanced Campaigns were introduced you would have had to have had a Campaign for every state - or at least for every set of states that were different - and one for the US in total, excluding all the states to which you've applied specific budgets. It could be quite messy. Enhanced Campaigns make it a lot easier to control spending on CPC from state to state, all within one Campaign.

If you've got enough conversion data in your AdWords Account you might like to use that alone for deciding how to split your spend but I prefer to use Analytics bringing in all traffic sources, not just AdWords, partly because you're dealing with a larger data set so theoretically more accurate modelling, but also because the pretty map is much easier to work out. Here's a location map from an Account showing Transactions.

The palest green here is 0 Transactions so that's the colour of New Mexico bottom middle, to the left of the big dark green Texas. There are some pretty obvious trends here. California, Texas and New York State are running away with the business while Florida and Pennsylvania are not far behind. But there's a lot of states here with no transactions at all (New Mexico, Idaho, North Dakota, etc.).

Let's say I'm only really bothered about the biggest sellers and the worst and I'll leave all those in the middle to fight it out amongst themselves. So I make a list, I'm going to make CA, TX & NY + 10%, FL & PA + 5%, NM, ID & ND - 10%. Now I log into my AdWords Account, select my Campaign and choose "Settings", then Locations from the button above the graph (at the moment all I can see is "United States"), then "Edit Locations", beneath the graph. In the page that appears I add all 8 States (making sure I choose the State entries) - nothing more to do in this page, then Save these new locations. My list will now show "United States" and the new 8 specific states I've chosen.

Alongside each entry is a column for "Bid adj." and I'll click into each position (at the moment just showing a hyphen) for each of the new states. When you click in the column a dialogue box will appear and you'll be able to choose whether to "Increase by" or "Decrease by" a percentage, the Max. CPC for that particular state. I go through my list increasing California and Texas by 10%, decreasing New Mexico by 10% and so on until they're all done.

That's it! From this point on, bid values from these specific states will be adjusted according to the percentages entered so I can pay less for my clicks from poorly converting states (while still showing Ads, just in case) and make sure my Ads are #1 for states that convert well.

You can analyse this stuff until the cows come home but here's a few things to remember:

1) Make sure you use a decent time period and number of data points to make these important decisions. Don't change your entire account spending pattern on the basis of 3 sales in a 24 hour period. I'd suggest you use data from at least a month, better yet a quarter, better still a whole year to allow for seasonal variations.

2) Get down in the detail. While in my example above I've boosted all of New York state, a closer look at the data might show that almost all of the transactions were actually from the City. It might make more sense to + 5% the state and another + 5% the City itself.

3) Watch those numbers. You can make bid adjustments all over the place in Enhanced Campaigns and they're all cumulative. If you boost for time, location and device you could end up with some quite high CPC figures from very modest beginnings - just be aware.

Of course, you may still want to split your Campaigns up to split the actual budget, but this new Location bid adjustment gives you another level of granularity to control exactly where your money is spent, and that has to be a good thing.

You Must Choose Wisely...

2013-03-15T11:16:00.001+00:00

I'm never sure whether to be amazed or saddened, or a little of both, when I come across a case like this. Just now on the AdWords Community there's a poster who's asking for help because their "agency" have denied them access to their AdWords Account. The poster spends a very large sum of money with this agency every year yet they can't even see their own advertising account or have any evidence of what work is being done.

I'm amazed because to me this sounds insane, I mean, who would make a decision like this in the first place and who would allow it to continue? If I said to you, dear reader, "Pay me £5,000 every month to manage your AdWords Account, on the understanding that I'll never let you see what I've done, and you'll never have access to the actual AdWords Account running your Ads." you'd laugh, wouldn't you?

I'm saddened because the tale is not an uncommon one. This poster is not unusual and in fairness they've not been naïve, they've just fallen foul of the same issue we all face when we need an "expert" to do work for us; we're at the mercy of their goodwill and honesty. It's very easy for me to say the way this agency works is unjust and they should be ashamed of themselves and that the hiring company have made a bad mistake, but it's easy because in this case I'm the expert. If I take my car in for a service and Ray says it needs a new clutch and it's going to cost £X, I have no idea whether what he's saying is true. I have to trust him. If, sometime down the line I have some way of proving that it didn't need a new clutch I'll realise I was fooled but I shouldn't feel bad because I had no way of knowing at the time.

(Luckily Ray is a very nice man who I trust totally. My car does need a service soon so I'd better be nice.).

There is something you can do in the case of AdWords though, something very easy. Ask. I'd rather answer 10,000 questions in a day from people who hadn't yet taken on an agency like this than answer just one from someone who I suspect may have been paying a lot of money without much reward.

You don't have to trust me either. Any decent AdWords consultant will tell you that in almost all cases the client should own the Account and the agency should be provided with access to it, not the other way around. In this way the client always retains complete control and always has full and total visibility of what it being done.

There are some very rare cases where I'd consider running Ads on behalf of a client but they'd all be very very small budgeted, short-term tests, not an ongoing promotion with any real budget.

So, if you're thinking of hiring an agency and you're not sure what to ask or what they should be offering, ask for help in the Community, we'll give it gladly.

Flogging A Dead...

2013-02-22T17:29:00.000+00:00

If you're in business, it's always a good idea to keep your ear to the ground for new developments or stories that will have an influence on your trade. Here in the UK we currently have a news story that should be making our stressed independent butchers jump for joy: The Horsemeat Scandal.

For those that don't know (or care, or both), horsemeat has been found in a large number and variety of pre-prepared meals here in the UK; typically those sold in supermarkets. Whilst a source of great discussion and contention, for our independent butchers this news is joyous. I've spoken to both our local butchers here where I live and they've both said they've seen a very welcome increase in trade. They can proudly say - and prove - that when you buy beef mince from them it will be "beef" mince not something that might conceivably once worn a saddle.

So, butchers think it's great, so what? Well, if you're a butcher, now is a perfect time to advertise. You not only have the benefit of the scandal making your business more attractive, you can use Keywords related to the scandal to show your Ads. Just now I searched for "horsemeat" in Google. I was instantly offered "horsemeat scandal" as a suggestion and have now seen a full page of results related to the current news. But there wasn't a single Ad from a butcher. That page should be covered with Ads promoting local businesses and the quality of their wares; buyers in the UK should be reminded that if they're worried about the quality of their meat they can get a reliable source and support local trade.

Even better news is that you really won't face any competition from supermarkets for once. I'm sure they're all thinking of how they might turn this disaster into a triumph but they won't be able to advertise their own in-horse, sorry, in-house butchers with a straight face. OK, so you were selling us horse meat from the chillers and freezers but we're supposed to trust you when it's over the counter?

So, c'mon all you butchers out there... where are your Ads?

Enhanced Campaigns - No Mobile Only?

2013-02-14T12:38:00.001+00:00

There's a terrible amount of gossip floating around the Web about Google's new Enhanced Campaigns and most of what I've read is about the "loss" of mobile-only Campaigns. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth and dire predictions of doom, all of which seems to stem from the idea that you can't turn off desktops and tablets.

Is this true?

Well, in one way, yes. There are no longer any checkbox options for choosing between desktop, tablet or mobile - and certainly no advanced choices for OS, models, etc. - but there are options that can focus Campaigns heavily towards mobile devices. How effective they'll be, only time can tell - it's still extraordinarily early in the game - but they are there, so how do they work?

Most of the chatter talks about being able to "turn off" mobiles by setting their bid to -100% - so the Max CPC effectively becomes 0. There's no option to do this for desktops or tablets - the only bid adjustment is for mobiles but you can make it positive. This means you set a very large positive bid adjustment for mobiles effectively leaving the bids for desktops and tablets in the dust. This is best explained by an example.

Let's say you're currently running a mobile-only legacy Campaign and you know that your CPC is generally around the $1 mark. This is also the sort of bid for a desktop that'll get you in the "top" position in Google Search. When you change to an Enhanced Campaign you can set your default Max CPC to $0.25 and set a bid adjustment of +300% which will result in a mobile bid of $1 - what it was before.* However it leaves the desktop and tablet bid at just $0.25, almost certainly far below the threshold for any decent impressions or clicks.

*This wouldn't be the case if I did the math, but it's how Enhanced Campaigns work it out.

And there's more. Enhanced Campaigns also allow you to specify a "mobile" preference for your Ads - there's a checkbox now in the Ad edit screen that allows you to say that you'd like this Ad to appear on mobile devices in preference to desktop devices. Before you ask, yes, you can set all your Ads to this but it won't stop them showing on desktops, all it will do is make all the Ads potentially show on desktops. A smarter course of action is to have just one Ad in each group that you've left as "non-mobile" and to write this Ad carefully, in the knowledge that it'll probably only be seen on desktops. I wouldn't suggest that you make a bad Ad in the hope it never gets clicked - if the Ad is going to show anyway you may as well make use of it - but you could make it clear the nature of your business or even encourage they visit your site with their mobile.

So, no, there's no checkbox any more to select just mobiles but it's not all doom and gloom; with a combination of smart mobile bid adjustments and mobile-preferences Ads, you can get most of the way there. When you add in all the other cool improvements that no one is talking about like bid adjustments based on location, better scheduling, vastly improved reporting, etc., much of which is focused on improving mobile support, Enhanced Campaigns are nowhere near the devils they're being painted.

Find out more about the Enhanced Campaign features.

Know Your Visitors - Use Surveys

2013-02-13T15:34:00.000+00:00

OK, this may not at first appear to be that relevant to AdWords, but it is, trust me.

What's the worst thing that can happen to an AdWords advertiser? No, not that, or that; it's receiving clicks that cost you money and don't turn into sales. Let's face it, you're sitting there sometimes just weeping at all those clicks that came to your site - and spent quite a long time looking around - but which then leave and never came back. If only you could know why?

Clever use of Google Analytics can give you clues. You can see which pages are favourites for leaving, which ones "bounce" high, and even which key pages people don't visit at all. You can see where people come from, what browsers they use, all sorts of fascinating stuff. What you can't do is ask them all, one by one, why they didn't buy from you.

Well, you can. You simply run a survey.

You can't have used the web for more than a few weeks (perhaps hours if you're really keen) without running across a site that asks you "just for a couple of minutes to answer some questions". Despite appearances these surveys are not simply there to annoy visitors, they serve a key purpose in helping to identify whether a site is fulfilling it's objective. They're there to gather the "why".

Surveys have been around for a long time but Google have just launched a new tool - Consumer Surveys - that make the process easy and, for a limited time I imagine, you can get $75 worth of surveying free. What? I have to pay for a survey? Well, yes, but think of the possible advantages.

Let's say your current Conversion Rate is 5%. Not that bad, pretty good in fact, compared to some businesses. But what if a simple survey that costs you less than $100 could show you something that could increase that rate to 8% or 18%? I'll leave you to work out what that could mean in terms of Net profit.

Don't be a Pain
However, as I've already said, most of the time these site surveys are a complete pain in the **bleep**. They ask too many questions and take too long. How many times have you grudgingly consented to fill one in (usually because of a promise of money or prizes - remember, I still want that Oris watch and a Porsche 911) that's supposed to just take 2 minutes only to find you're still sat there answering question 2,872 six months later?

Google's Consumer Surveys are significantly different in that they ask just one question of each person they ~~trap~~ approach. You build a survey of how ever many questions you want but each individual is only asked one of them. Because these questions can be asked on all manner of sites, at all sorts of times, you'll get a much better "representative sample" than just getting mugs to fill in all 2,873 questions in one go.

So how can this be used to help Adwords? It's all about satisfying the needs of the potential customer. If you can find out what people really want, you can tailor your marketing towards that.

Let's go back to my old favourite - lawnmower sales. If you sell all manner of lawnmowers, you could create a survey that just asks a handful of questions like; "Do you prefer electric or petrol?", "Cylinder, Hover or Rotary?", "Qualcast, Black and Decker, (other brands)?", "How much would you spend?". There are probably a few more you could think of but just these four questions could give you a much better understanding of what is really popular in lawnmowing web users today.

OK, it's not going to be for everyone, but it's worth thinking about, isn't it?

If you want a more traditional approach to individual surveys - and the concept of using this information to enhance your marketing is just as valid - I can recommend these folks: http://www.iperceptions.com/ they have a great product that is FREE for small organisations (be honest now...) and very reasonable for the paid plans. What have you got to lose?