Put Prices in the Ad?

Should you put the product price in your ad?

[jarboy]

Hi,

I'm sure it's been done here before but I wondered what the latest wisdom is regarding adding the price of a product in an AdWords ad?

Also wondered what people do re A/B testing for ads. For example if I have an adgroup with 10 keywords and 2 ads I can test the return on each keyword by having a unique tracking code for each keyord OR I can track the performance of each ad having a unique 'default' url on each ad.

But I can't have both :-(( What would people recommend - filter off 1 keyword and do ad testing on that? I'm just curious.

[marek]

Putting price in an AdWords ad could be a good idea when:

• Your price is very competitive. The price far below the market average can increase CTR twice or even more.
  
• Your ad could make people feel you offer something for free. For example you sell a book and you need to make clear, it is the real book, not free online information.
  

[edit_g]

Make sure that if your price changes, you also reflect that in the ad.

[ddent]

In the case of PPC, showing your price can be a good thing in terms of ROI - it is a negative qualifier, i.e. a way of reducing clickthroughs from people not looking to spend money. In general, you will reduce your CTR, but increase your conversion.

(But despite all that, I always recommend testing both!)

[sem4u]

It depends how competitive on price you are. You could also mention free shipping if you offer that.

[joeag]

When testing we:

1. Pause the original baseline comparison group;
2. Create a new group with identical keywords, budget and bid prices;
3. Create new test ads (we actually use a special process and test 27 ad components at once).
4. After 7 days we then measure the resuls and we also use the G "Ad Text Report" to break down performance by keyword.
5. We then run the best ad or ads.

Note: Always turn the "rotate" or "optimize" feature off at the campaign level so you get an equal number of impressions/trials for your test ads.

[marek]

Joeag, when you start a new ad group, aren't your kewords ranked different than in the original one? If they are, the new ad may be on a different position what would affect its CTR.

[joeag]

In my experience, as long as daily budget and max cpc is the same, the positions are fairly consistent, or approach the original positions in fairly short order.

There is no reason you have to start a new adgroup though if you are worried about this issue, we just do it because it makes comparison easier.

[jarboy]

Hi Joeagg

Your system looks very interesting. Just to come back to the second part of my original question - do you measure performance of the creative at the adgroup level?

I mean if you have more than one keyword in a group there is no way to know which keyword AND which ad creative the user clicked on? You can only track one or the other - is that correct?

[joeag]

I think you are asking two different questions:

1. AdGroup level - yes we measure (and create) the best ad at the AdGroup level (meaning across all keywords).

2. In the very near future, we will measure the best ad or each keyword, and then re-arrange the AdGroups so that all keywords that respond similarly to the same ad appear in that group.

You can also manually do this by running an "Ad Text Report". Make sure to check all keywords and when your report is generated you can see response, by ad, by keyword.

Hope this helps...