 |
Your AdWords Advertisements May Not Be Displaying When You Think They ArePosted by Joe on January 13, 2009 in Advanced PPC Strategies, Google AdWords |
As your Google AdWords campaign matures, you will be able to determine which days of the week, and what time of day, generates the best results, and you can manage your campaign settings accordingly.
By utilizing Ad Scheduling within AdWords you can control when your ad appears by hour and by day. This a very helpful tool to further optimize your campaigns. But if you don’t pay close attention, you may not be using this feature optimally.
You can find this option within your AdWords campaign settings. Just click “Edit Campaign Settings” and you will find your “Scheduling and Serving” information. To edit when your ads are displaying, just click on “Edit times and bids.” This is what you should look for in your campaign setting screen:
You can choose which days of the week you would like to display ads, and which hours during these days as well. As you can see below, I have selected to run my ads from 5am to 8pm, Monday through Friday. Also, I am not displaying advertisements on the weekend. You can see how I have set this up below:
This looks like right, so I just need to click “Save changes” and I’m done! Honestly, it’s just that easy. However, do not ignore the information at bottom of this screen shot. Here it is again:
This is where Ad Scheduling can be tricky if you don’t pay attention. This phrase, “Time zone for all statistics in this account: (GMT-06:00) Central Time,” is important. Your statistics are not just effected by the chosen time zone, but so is your ad scheduling as a whole. The time frame I established above (5am to 8pm) is for Central Time.
The time zone displayed here is the one I chose when initially setting up my AdWords account. You can not change your time zone once it’s chosen. However, if you absolutely need to change the time zone within your account, you should contact Google to apply for a change.
So, what does this mean for your campaign? Here is a time zone map of North America:
This means that my ads are currently scheduled across the country in this manner:
- Eastern Time Zone: 6am-9pm
- Central Time Zone: 5am-8pm
- Mountain Time Zone: 4am-7pm
- Pacific Time Zone: 3am-6pm
I do not want may ads to shut off so early on the west coast. Before I finalize my changes, I am going to add two hours to my schedule. This way, my ads will shut off at 8pm on the west coast. You may have to make similar adjustments to your campaign.
Be aware of how time zones effect your ad scheduling and adjust accordingly. This account setting can be a great way to target your traffic by time of day. But you have to make sure you set up everything correctly, otherwise your AdWords ads may not be displaying when you think they are.
- Keywords Inactive? They Might Be Ahead of Their Time!
- Are Your Google Keywords Actually Active?
- A Little AdWords Quality Score Sluething
- Our Greatest Hits for March, 2009
- Are Your Ads Displaying on the Content Network? Better Check Your Settings!
January 13th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Thanks for the tip! I manage PPC campaigns using time scheduling for some east coast clients and I am in Central time zone, so I’ll definitely have to look into that.
January 13th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
@Hunter: Yep. This is certainly something to think about! Especially for those east coast campaigns.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
>>> I do not want may ads to shut off so early on the east coast. Before I finalize my changes, I am going to add two hours to my schedule. This way, my ads will shut off at 8pm on the east coast. <<<
I think you mean West Coast.
January 14th, 2009 at 9:51 am
@Lance: You are correct! Fixed the post. Good eyes!
January 15th, 2009 at 3:52 am
Great Post, timing is key ;P
However, be carefull: you could see on your reports etc that most people convert monday to friday, but expecially mondays. So you would cut off the weekend right? Wrong, not in all cases…
We had a client like this where we cut weekends off because they didnt convert, but then it affected the monday performance… Meaning people had done their research and discussed the product at the weekend, and converted on the monday… the sunday was therefore very valuable.
January 15th, 2009 at 3:56 am
lol sry my comment has nothing to do with your post lol. I saw time targetting and went off on one. lol sry, delete if u want
January 16th, 2009 at 11:56 am
[...] Understanding your options in AdWords. A friend of mine, who is a PPC marketing manager, once lost a client $100,000 in a week because he forgot to turn off the content network for this new account. What this little anecdote illustrates to me is the need to be aware of how AdWords works and what are the options available to you as an advertiser (as well as the fact that there is a ton of them and it is easy to get lost). Joe from PPC Hero has a good article on the Ad Scheduling options available in Google AdWords and how different time zones affect your ads w…. [...]
January 18th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Have you played around with the day-parting features as well (under advanced options for scheduling). FUN stuff in there!!
You can set the “timer” to up your bids by your set percentage during different times of the day. I LOVE this b/c you don’t have to turn off your ads on the weekends, you can just “turn down” your bids instead!
Shanee
January 19th, 2009 at 7:13 am
@Shanee: Yes, I’ve used the bid adjustment options in this feature. I agree, this is very helpful when managing accounts at the hourly level. That may be my next follow up post!
January 19th, 2009 at 7:35 am
I have to say that I love reading these blogs to know that I’m not alone in my “nerdy” love for PPC. You guys rock!
May 25th, 2009 at 2:52 am
Thanks for the info. I was having that problem on my campaign!
May 31st, 2009 at 2:02 pm
HI looks very interesting! bookmarked your blog. john brightman