Now that AdWordsAdvisor hangs out in this forum, I haven't been prowling here as much--but I'll be reading the "what would you like to see" thread and the other threads on this forum before tomorrow. So if you have something different to mention, lemme know. It's only a half-hour meeting, but I'd prefer to go into it with feedback from folks here. :)
Cool!
AWA
These are my major problems/would like to see issues.
1. Contact Info vs Billing Info. This has been my number one request since AdWords opened - and it's still an issue. I can't list my contact info in the account. If G gives me a call, they actually call the advertisers office who knows nothing about AdWords - they just pay the bills. I want to let G know MY contact info so if there is a problem, they give me a call and not the company's accounting department.
2. Regional Targeting. If you are a national advertiser and a regional advertiser, then your ads compete against each other when someone from that region does a search. The ability to list a hierarchy of if someone is from this metro area, then show this ad, if they are not from that metro region, but in this state, then show state, if they aren't in either, then show my national - this would remove my ads from competiting against each other and show more revelant ads to searchers.
At present, regional advertising is medicore at best when you are also a national advertiser. As regional targeting seems to be the way many search engines are moving, getting a better system in place would significently help both the advertisers, and the G engineers who are working on the search end of the product.
3. More campaigns. I have several clients who advertise in multiple states. One has around 50 offices in 12 states, and would like to make city specific ads for directly around those metro areas, and then state ads for the rest of them - as well as some national advertising to catch the AOL traffic. This would require 63 different regional type ads. Not possible under the current system.
4. This is a PROBLEM. Maxed Bid & Bid Rank. If someone comes in and bids $50/click when the next highest bid isn't even over $5, but they don't have a high enough CTR rate to be in the premium position, then the 2nd highest ad which might have the qualifications won't be shown in the premium position even though it might have occupied the spot for months. This could be fixed with capping the top bid at 2x the current top bid for new advertisers.
There is a very insidious way to use this to manipulate competitors CTR. I really don't want to post it in a public forum and educate more people to how to do this - but I would like G to know about it. If there is a way to send someone an email/sticky about this, please let me know - I really don't want to state this in an open forum but its been a problem for a while.
5. Block AdSense Ads. The ability to block your ad from being shown on an AdSense site. The AdSense people can block certain ads from being shown, let the people who are spending the money block their ad from being shown on such a site.
6. Content Targeting Campaigns. Content targeting advertising is different from search advertising. Let us make campaigns that are content targeted only. If G requires that we also bid on that KW in a search campaign so it can use those numbers for CTR rates - no problem - but I'd like to show different ads on content targeting sites than on search sites.
7. Customer Service & emails. There are many occasions where I want G support about a small problem, and just want to use the contact us link inside my account. However, more often than not, I never receive a response and have to use the phone. G's phone support is excellent, and I only have good things to say about it - but the email customer support is quite lacking.
8. Keep up the good work. Overall, I'd rate G advertising as one of the better forms on the net, and I think you should pass on the thanks to all the cubicile people who only get the problem phone calls and don't hear how good of an overall job I think they're doing.
I understand the need for a consistent competitive field for bidding. I wonder if it's possible to create that field among advertisers choosing to avoid Google pages, rather than having the only available bidding venue consist exclusively of Google pages.
A related request: Provide numbers for keyword performance on Google pages. The "At risk" warning system is an awfully blunt tool in an otherwise laser-sharp environment, especially considering how crucial the Google-page stats are to the health of keywords.
Anyway, it's great that you're taking suggestions at all. I appreciate being able to pitch in my two cents.
very cool of you to drop by, AWA has been doing a superb job, deserves a pay rise and daily doses of Ice Cream served by a googlette of his choice,
and I apologise for my absence lately (we all have a living to make)
I will let other members share and give feedback in this thread, but I have 1 request:
Do NOT leave Google adwords vouchers unattended at trade shows such as Pubcon or SES,
even though your sales team dont give a damn, since vouchers are being used, targets being met and sign ups are being made to impress Wall St,
The small 1 man/woman operator who could benefit so much from being introduced to adwords is missing out BIG time.
I have yet to meet someone to whom I gave a free voucher over the last 12 mths, who has NOT gone on to becoming a regular adwords spender.
no wonder they are doing the rounds at Ebay...
Shak
apologies to friends who will lose out on this lucrative market ;)
2) I'd also like a faster login.
3) In the reporting of amount spent, I'd like a view that can show how much I spent for a particular time period without any breakdowns for time periods, campaigns, etc. If it could generate lock-down PDF, that would be even better. This would be useful for taxes and showing potential customers that I spend significant amounts to drive traffic.
4) oh, and can we also get more clicks for less money :)
There are bunches of ideas I'd like to see implemented (see [webmasterworld.com...] and [webmasterworld.com...] ), but these two are at the top of my list.
Seemingly least once per session, I get one of those error messages that basically says "We're sorry, there's been an error, and it's been reported to us." This usually results in me having to log back in later to finish whatever I was doing.
This happens way too often, IMHO. Not sure what can be done on your end to address this specifically, but here's hoping... :D
Currently we have to log in to multiple accounts, and go through the invoices one by one and print them off. It's bad enough not knowing what is going to be taken on the card and when, but to not receive notification after the event is worse still.
One login for multiple agency accounts.
Accreditation scheme for approved agencies/SEM's with solid business practises.
The meeting has probably finished now......
Oh and some more of the groovy mouse mats and notepads and pens that your lovely UK sales people brought to our office yesterday, sure our clients would love them as well as the staff.
Not sure if this is what you were looking for or not.
Thanks.
I'd rather fine-tune my campaign, maybe raise the limit or maybe lower the click-price, instead of - with no warning - have my ads stopped for the rest of the period.
- I select a desired cost/conversion before I start a campaign, say $10 per conversion.
- After the campaign runs for a month, the keywords will collect cost/conversion data.
- Currently, suppose I'm paying $1.00 for all the keywords. Some keywords will have a cost/conversion of $5 while others will have cost/conversion of $15.
- Automatic bid mgmt tool reduces/increases the bid prices of the keywords based on their conversion rates & cost per conversion. If a particular keyword has a cost/conversion of $5, the tool doubles the max CPC of that keyword
If a particular keyword has a higher than desired cost/conversion, say $15, then the tool automatically reduces the max CPC of the keyword by 33%.
The bid prices are constantly adjusted to make sure that each keyword's cost/conversion is almost equal to that of desired cost/conversion.
I consider this one of the most important points raised so far. It has been promised before, but it definitively justifies getting repeated.
I'd also like to add my voice to the others for the ability to be able to stop my Ads being displayed on specific content/partner sites.
Either that or make sure that partner/content Ads really are targetted. It's really annoying to be paying for non-performing ads because a partner displays the most profitable (rather than most targetted) Ads.
A) Login speed is ridiculously slow.
B) The traffic estimator needs to be re-worked or removed! This has really got to be screwing new advertisers. It's never even remotely accurate.
C) Allow advertisers to make a deposit into their accounts in case of a credit card problem. Or extend large advertiserssome sort of grace period.
2. Seperate bidding for search and content
I will definitely say that. :) Okay, my meeting is in an hour so I'm going to print out this thread so far. Thanks for the feedback--some of it I've heard before, but a few of these suggestions are new to me.
How do we know AdWords campaigns are being displayed on legitimately owned websites? Shouldn’t there be a procedure to keep both AdWords and AdSense ethical a free from fraud in cases of misuse?
My clients website has been copied/stolen/cloned (verbatim) with WebZIP/5.0 and the perpetrator is selling AdSense on the copied site. My client has been a long time user of AdWords campaigns (+20,000 USD) and might even be funding/paying the owner of the stolen site through their use of AdSense displaying our campaigns?
Outside of the infringing copy write issues - AdWords and AdSense should be more aware of this issue and allow for a better channel for communication to resolve it… we have not resolved it yet.
It is to difficult to manage a budget if you want to be in a #1 or #2 position. I see so many new competitor advertisers who don't know what they are doing. Maybe make the adwords tool more difficult to use, or some type of qualification/training process. It is unfortunate to see sponsor links over-priced due to lack of knowledge.
I just recieved my pack of Google Gum and Google Light pens yesterday from a Google sales presentation. I think you should send me more :)
I would love a web services API to allow me to at LEAST pull the statistics for a campaign. It would be even better if we could create/modify campaigns through the API.
