There seems to be no rhyme or rhythm to this, they go from slow delivery to no delivery and back. Campaigns/Ad groups/Keywords are active, budget is ok, CTR is/was ok, credit card is ok. Checked for slowed keywords in the reports section but none show up.
Tried email support, but they seem to be unable to help me.
Anybody else experiencing the same problems, or does anybody have a clue as to what could be causing this?
Check that again. Ads are often slowed to maximise the preset budget over the day.
Try raising the daily budget and see if it changes it.
Oh, and welcome to WebmasterWorld.
I'm running several language targeted campaigns, which for the last few days have been performing erratically; ad delivery is intermittent or no ads at all...budget is ok...
lvberkum, I think that engine is on the right track with his/her comment:
Check that again. Ads are often slowed to maximise the preset budget over the day.
When an ad only shows occasionally, it is almost always a daily budget issue.
Many advertisers think that if their budget has not been spent, then their ad will still be showing - but this is not necessarily the case.
It is your recommended budget that determines how often your ad shows. If the recommended budget is higher than your actual budget, then your ad won't show every time for every keyword.
You can easily check your daily budget as compared to the recommended budget, using the 'Edit Campaign Settings' link near the top left of the campaign page.
Once you get there, click the link in item #2 to see you recommended budget.
I had already checked the budgets, and they seemed to be ok. I have however now raised the budgets to way above estimate; see if that will reanimate the campaigns.
Has it happened that the budget estimating tool underestimates the actual budget required?
You'll find the real problem related to some keywords that are searched more on the weekends or weekdays, and not averaged out over the week.
For example we've got a KW that 40% of it's searches are done over the weekend, yet only 28% of a budget spend occurs on the weekend (2 days of 7), so we need to raise our budget by a significent amount to actually catch all the weekend clicks we can get. Although during the week, we don't come close to our daily budget, so G thinks our budget is set way to high overall, even though it's necessary to catch the weekend traffic.
Has it happened that the budget estimating tool underestimates the actual budget required?
Yes, this can happen in cases where many of the keywords in the campaign have an exceptionally high CTR. The system uses an average CTR as one of the components in its calculation of the recommended budget - and if your CTR is way above that the system can be fooled.
A couple of tips to troubleshoot for this:
* Do a day-by-day check to see whether your budget is consistently being met or exceeded. If so, then it is probably time to raise the budget (or delete some keywords).
* Raise the budget temporarily. Give the system 30 minutes or so to update, then check to see if your ad shows all the time. If it does, then (yep) it is time to raise the budget (or delete some keywords).
In this last scenario, don't forget to set your budget to where you actually want it, before you log out.
I got this explanation from AdWords support (in the Netherlands) though: "There were problems with several campaigns because they are put up for review every 100.000 impressions; they have been reviewed now and should run normally". Indeed after I recieved this mail the campaigns were back to normal.
A lot of my campaigns generate 100k impressions in about a week; sofar I hadn't noticed any significant slow down due to a compulsory review. Maybe some kind of glitch?
