1. Ad CTR rates for Google only as this is what determines ad placement.
2. The ability to show ads on only partner sites and not Google.
With the ability to regional target on Google, and not on partner sites, disabling a national campaign on Google for regional ads, yet keeping the national for partners would give us more control.
3. AdSense Only Campain.
AdSense searches are much different than Google ones. If Google is in doubt, it uses a more common keyword, and not more specific ones. This has led to many terms not being properly advertised for on AdSense, as those common terms people would rack up thousands of impressions a day on Google, and yet less than a thousand on AdSense sites. I would like to make a campaign strictly for AdSense which is not shown anywhere else as it's such a different type of market.
4. Allow advertisers to pay in advance.
Many people use debit cards for PPC so their cards don't get out of control, or so accountants have some control over Ad dollars.
5. Suggestion for the Beta Regional Ads - Allow more than 5 groups per campaign. If you want to target all of NY except NYC, you need to make 2 campaigns as NY has more than 5 areas.
6. Higher cap on max campaigns.
With the regional campaign, I'm also having issues with the max number of campaigns allowed (25). We're in 21 states, and I'd like to see the numbers per state (plus different ads preform completely differently in various states), so I want one regional campaign per state. Combined with my other national ads, I don't have enough campaign space to accomplish this.
I think this is my Google wish list, at least for today...
"I'd like to see a tool that let advertisers run Google searches on their terms without worrying about creating unnecessary impressions."
I agree wholeheartedly. For example, I use a bid-monitoring tool for Google AdWords and it checks my position every hour. It will raise or lower my bid in an effort to keep me at a certain position. Now it looks like that term has a ton more impressions and a correspondingly terrible CTR.
If more people start using tools like this, it will definitely make CTR a less valuable metric.
I'll be forwarding ideas/suggestions/feature requests, etc. to the appropriate folks on Friday evening. So if anyone has anyting to add, please feel free.
AWA
as mentioned before.
some form of account support centre when an advertiser is logged in, this would allow for support requests to be dealt with in a timely manner, along with the knowledge that a request is being processed etc.
very similar to the ticket systems used by many hosting companies (ticket open > ticket closed)
make sense?
Shak
Same goes for the ads - why not display a little symbol next to each ad showing if it's under review/been approved by an adwords editor?
Cheers,
Chris
AWA
It would be great if Google gathered together some of the stuff like the explainations you have given here in a Less Frequently Asked But Still Important Questions (LFABSIQ) document. There seems to be a number of questions that pop up that are beyond a simple FAQ and might cause confusion to the raw begginer if they had to wade through them, but the answers make the relationship much more profitable for advertisor and Google. In the last three months that I have followed the Adwords section of WW, I have transformed my Adwords campaign that I started when Adwords was first announced from a $15-$25/month borderline venture into a $250-$300/month money maker.
However, there are plenty of times where that click takes me back to the login page instead of the ad page.
I don't know why this happens, but it's frustrating to have to relogin immediately after logging in.
Content is bonus hits, and we get a high enough ROI to make them worthwhile, but their CTR has varied from 0.8%-66% on any given day throughout our campaigns.
I make my ads for searchers, and don't treat content hits (since they have a lower roi) as real searches, but bonus results - thus, I want to optimize my ads for searhers.
When you get a day where content ads are served on an campaign 3k + times for 1 hit, and the next day 600 hits for the same 3k impressions, yet the keyword runs over a 10% search CTR on both days, I think it can easily mess up the ad serving and optimizing numbers that I really want to concentrate on.
I'm working on my campaign right now, and an ad that ran a 23% CTR alltime (and has been around for months), suddenly is relegated to being served 1.8% of the time as it's CTR the past week is under 10%, - and I really think it's due to it being served repeatedly on content sites, and thus not getting the proper exposure of search for the ad.
I would still VERY much like to be able to make ads for content only, as they have such a different target audience than search users.
This way we could also optimize not only campaigns, but ads for searchers vs content. And if we get more click throughs, well, G gets more money...
This would allow more accurate budget forecasts during research but also ensure advertisers pick up on UK-specific terminology (e.g. solicitor, not attorney) to bid upon.
I'd also like to see regional targeting to UK regions / major cities (maybe starting with Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland, then onto big citites like London, Edinburgh, Birmingham...) Not sure how feasible this is, but we are all aware of the potential of local search I'm sure.
I make CTR changes based off of search stats, not off of content marketing, and being to quickly summarize the entire ads serch or content CTR/CPC/COST/Etc. would be very useful.
That would be a step towards making easy tracking parameters.
The biggest thing I would like adwords to do is offer a way to run different ads/rates based on time and day of the week. Over the course of time using rigerous tracking software I found what times are key and what times are not, when I should spend the high $ and when I should pause the ad group. Right now I have a dedicated machine that is automated to do all of this for me for all of my campaigns across the board, but would def like to see something on adwords.
Would simplify my bookkeeping process if all my vendors did this.
Even better would be automagic links to Quickbooks. ;)
--Mike
I've forwarded all that were made previous to Friday around 3:00 pm - and will continue to do so with the newer ones.
Keep 'em coming! The feedback is very useful. ;)
AWA
Would it be possible to have a statement at the bottom of the campaign and reports screens that says when the information was last refreshed? For example a line in small print could say
"Database information last updated today at 1:15 p.m. Pacific (-8 GMT)."
That way, when I look at "today's" data, I know how fresh the information is. With people in different time zones using Adwords, the concept of "today" is very subjective. When you add the reporting delay, the perception of "today" becomes even more confusing.
The freshness tagline makes most sense when a campaign summary or report includes data from Google's "today." Historical reports don't have the same flux.
While you're at it, send some of the earnings from this over to DMOZ as a donation. Google has benefited immensely from their work. It sure would be nice if DMOZ and Google could get the Google Directory updated more frequently. A few more bucks in DMOZ's budget might make that happen.
My problem is I have something like:
this for sale
that for sale
another for sale
this to buy
that to buy
another to buy
but, I want to target even more because my "this, that and another" is common. So I want to have these key words:
blue
green
red
Which means
this blue for sale
that blue for sale
this red for sale
etc...
The way it is now I would have to create 18 search phrases. But if there was something like a positive match I would just have to add:
+blue
+green
+red
Then, someone would have to type in at least one of the + matches.
As it is now, if I want to do more specific targeting I would need to create 297 keyword phrases for one of my current campains. With positive matching, I would only need to do 38.
Jeff
I don't know if anyone has suggested this, but it would be a great idea to have some kind of stats on negative KWs. Specifically, the number of times the negative KW prevented "main" KWs from triggering our ad. This will help us remove inactive negative KW and build on negative KW that are useful.
At a minimum, I should be able to have a "black list" of sites I don't want my adds shown on. If I have any problems whatsoever with a particular displayer of my adds, I should be able to pull my adds *only* from them (without loosing major traffic sites). Even if a site is 100% legit, I should be able to stop my adds on their site, based solely on the fact that clicks are not converting to clients.
Google's AdSense partners can block a specific AdWord customer (I think, correct me if I'm wrong). AdWords customers should have exactly the same right to block specific AdSense partners.
Ideally, somebody could start with a small budget and have their ads shown on all partners. Then, figure out who's good, who's bad (by scanning their web logs). Then, black-list the baddies, and show ads on just the good ones, before increasing their budget.
So, don't stop!
AWA
And again, I'd really like it if the account managment system didn't randomly log me out every minute or two.
>Adwords on the Google Directory
They already do.
Ok, there's a story to show why this feature should be added, as it sounds lik an odd request.
I ran a test to see the difference between broad match only vs breaking up ads into pieces.. I took my broad match terms and split some up into exact, phrase, and broad match.
And then an interesting thing happened. Because my exact match and phrase match was getting a high CTR, it's CPC dropped, causing the ad to fall from the premium position into the #1 side position, causing its CTR to fall.
My AdGroup CTR ended up slightly lower after breaking them up because of the loss of premium position. If my competitors were better, then my ad would have stayed in the premium position and the break up of the group might have ended up outpreforming broad match.
It turns out that the broadmatch causes me to spend about 0.02 cents more per click which is enough to keep me in the premium position, and the additional revenue from being there more than makes up for the slightly higher CPC.
So adding info about 'premium position' to the LFABSIQ document (I don't want to post this everywhere), and then allowing a minumum spend would solve the problem of the people who fluctuate back and forth for premium position.
Sorry if this has been mentioned.
Today I got an email from Adwords telling me that my credit card was declined and my account suspended. Now, if this had been on a friday afternoon/evening, I could have lost a whole weekend of targeted Adwords traffic.
They either need to move to a deposit system like Over. Or give big advertisers a buffer period before suspending the account. Even a few hours would be helpful. I trust you with my credit card, now extend some trust to me.
Also, I'd like to see the 25 campaigns limit increased. And more time allowed on idle before I get booted and have to log back in.
Even if was saturday afternoon, if you add funds to the card (sounds like a debit card), and then relog into your account, reenter the same account info, and hit submit - G tries on the spot to charge the card, and if successful, your campaign is restored immediately. I can't count the number of times I called the bank or used online banking on a friday/saturday to transfer funds around for this exact purpose.
Although, I agreed, I would like to see a prepay option so I always know my account balance.
I know, my point was that I may not have received the notification until Monday. I don't always check my email on weekends.
