I started a new adwords campaign about 3 days ago, and I find the amount of impressions and therefore clickthru's to be low and very erratic.
I have looked through these forums and the adwords site and tried everything such as:
Keyword specific ads
Increased my daily budget (G recommends €1k p/d, i set it to €10k p/d)
The ads are targeted to about 15 different mainly european countries, and the keyword estimator tells me I should be getting about 700 clicks a day. My average position is 2.4, but this average is skewed by 2 keywords that I am not willing to pay top $ for.
My CTR is averaging about 1.0% so it isn't bad.
Now why would I only be getting something like 1k impressions a day, when the keyword estimator predicts that I should be getting 900 clicks a day and with a CTR of 1%, something like 90000 impressions a day?
I also cannot see my ads on google no matter what I try, i.e. &gl=uk, etc.
My CPC is also set to a reasonable price, the keyword estimator tool still gives me the exact same results if I double my CPC.
I also have two other campaigns in the same account which I run well below budget becuase I cannot justify a huge expenditure as they are mainly used for website awareness. So some exposure is better than none for these.
Any ideas?
This problem isn’t just with your account. Many of the local targeted estimates are off and I’m sure that Adwords is working hard to correct this. But the only way to solve the problem on traffic isn’t due to this Adwords discrepancy it’s actually to do with the maximum CPC you’ve put for your terms. The best way to solve this is to increase your maximum CPC till you see your ads being shown, this will also give you a better idea on the actual cost/results you can expect and you can plan accordingly.
As for not being able to see your ads on Google this could be due to the fact that you’ve set local targeting which means only users from the selected countries you’ve targets will see your ad. For example if I target my ad for the United States and I’m in the UK I will never be able to see my ad as my targeting won’t allow it.
If you live in the UK, and you're advertising to US residents only, you can see what US residents see on Google.
Simply type in '&gl=us' at the very end of the address information.
Do this for every G page you look at.
I tried increasing the max CPC's to 8€ when the average cost is about 4€ a click (max so far 7.50). So far no difference, the traffic just trickles through in fits and starts.
Are you saying I should go even higher?
There is a lag time between when you submit your ads and when they are approved for the partners. They will usually only show up immediately on Google search.
This could be where the impressions are being held back.
Give it a few more days before panicking.
It is starting to drive me nuts though becuase I have an 18% conversion rate on my site, and I need to get something like a thousand click-thru's a day, but so far I am really lucky if I get 20 a day.
Without knowing your keywords it’s hard to say but it sound like you might need to go higher as you might be so far below the average advertiser CPC that your ad still doesn't show up.
Have you ever used overture to judge what the average CPC would be under your terms? If not you can download a program at <snip> then you simply enter the keyword you want to see the bids of.
Notice these bids are not the Adwords bids but the Yahoo bids, most advertisers use both especially on key industries but Adwords does tend to be a little lower in cost then Yahoo. Plus Adwords doesn't simply sell the guaranteed #1 spot like Yahoo so the # spot in Adwords could be someone actually paying less then the #2 spot.
After you know more on what the other advertisers are paying you can see if your CPC is in line with the other advertisers. If you fall short then up your CPC and you’ll start seeing your ad more and more and those sales hopefully increase accordingly.
[edited by: eWhisper at 9:01 am (utc) on Nov. 17, 2004]
[edit reason] No URL promotions please [/edit]
Thanks for the program recommendation, it seems like a great tool.
I checked with the program though, and it seems that my max CPC is more than enough. Just to be sure I raised it to 4 times it's original, and still little traffic.
You mentioned previously that googles regional stats are out, could they be out by 100%, i.e. the keyword tool says that now I should be getting 1700 clicks p/d, but normally I get about 17 p/d, and that is with a 1.0% CTR.
Capt
