Ok....done ranting now.
...Still, I don't quite see you giving an answer to my observation, that with a track record of 17 months continues time for the campaign, the recommended budget tool says "Yes, 10$ per day is ok" and less than two minutes later it confirms "Yes, 1$ per day is OK"?
pmkpmk, without access to your account it is pretty hard to diagnose what might be going on with your recommended daily budget vs. your actual daily budget.
But, as I mentioned earlier, and as your observation confirms, think of the recommended budget as one tool in an arsenal, rather than a figure absolutely to be relied on. There are a number of things that can throw it off, which have been discussed at length in past threads here on WebmasterWorld. Chief among them: the system that arrives at the recommended budget calculates using an average CTR of roughly 2%. If you have lots of keywords with CTRs higher than that, the recommended budget calculation can be incorrect.
You can only change the budget a few times a day, and then it will prevent you from changing it any further.Wouldn't it be awful if it froze your daily budget at $200 per day? or alternately at $0.01 per day? I think the limit is 5 changes a day or something, and it doesn't warn you when you have just one chance left.
Martingale, there is in fact a limit of times that the budget may be changed daily - and it is 10 times per campaign.
This ties in to a point that I'd like to expand on later - which is that in a single account an advertiser may therefore change their daily budget 250 times in 24 hours (25 campaigns x 10 changes per campaign) and there has to be a system in place the keeps track of this, and adjusts for it, moment to moment.
In other words, keeping track of daily budget is far more complex than simply stopping ads when a single fixed budget is gone. Especially if you keep in mind that the system that calculates recommended budget also has to track (and adjust for) many related factors beyond actual daily budget, such as any and all Max CPC changes, Country Targeting changes, changes to number of Ad Groups, changes to the number and type of keywords made in each of the campaigns, and so forth.
As well as what the competitive landscape is like out there with many tens of thousands of other advertisers. ;)
OK, it looks as if I've started to write another essay. I think I'll post this now, and get back to the subject a little later.
AWA
the system that arrives at the recommended budget calculates using an average CTR of roughly 2%. If you have lots of keywords with CTRs higher than that, the recommended budget calculation can be incorrect
Well, I thought this solved my "mystery". The campaign I have tested with has a CTR of 6.4%, another one even 11%. However, another campaign has a CTR of 2.1%, and I just redid the same test. Daily budget was EUR 10 - stated OK. Changed to EUR 1 - still OK. Changed to EUR 200 - OK as well.
without access to your account it is pretty hard to diagnose
For obvious reasons sticky mails are disabled for your account. In case you really want to drill this down, yoou have to sticky me then.
Hugh: No. Consider the case of a flower vendor on Mother's Day day. The next day is *NOT* the same. If you allow your competitor to knock your ads offline at 8am on Mothers day you'll lose out huge.
Understood. I was thinking "net effect" regarding non-time/date-critical ad serving.
Well, I thought this solved my "mystery". The campaign I have tested with has a CTR of 6.4%, another one even 11%. However, another campaign has a CTR of 2.1%, and I just redid the same test. Daily budget was EUR 10 - stated OK. Changed to EUR 1 - still OK. Changed to EUR 200 - OK as well.
pmkpmk, even if the campaign CTR is around average (2.1% in other words) it is still possible for there to be several high CTR keywords within the Ad Groups in the campaign. Even a few very high CTR keywords can be enough to throw off the calculation. It need not be the entire campaign, in other words.
With all that said, if what you're seeing concerns you, and you feel that there may be something amiss in your account, please don't hesitate to contact AdWords support and ask them to take a look. Please be sure to be specific about which campaign(s) you are concerned with, and provide a detailed (but brief) overview of what is happening.
And again, at the bottom line, if your concern is making sure that your budget is sufficient, I'd recommend putting your daily budget where you want it, and then monitoring your actual statistics over time to see whether your budget is not met, met, or exceeded - and then to make adjustments to suit based on your objectives, and your ROI.
I feel as if I may be missing your question here - and if so, please clarify, and I'll do my best to assist.
AWA
I feel as if I may be missing your question here - and if so, please clarify, and I'll do my best to assist.
I have the same feeling, only positions reversed.
I actually DON'T have a problem. I'm fine with my budgets. They work. They provide conversions with reasonable conversions costs. For my product, it is playing out pretty well. And now, that after almost 16 months the first competition starts to use AdWords, it gets quite interesting and is a whole lot of fun!
Again, the issue - IF there is an issue at all - is that you stated earlier in the thread that the budget-suggestion tool should be referenced if in doubt. That actually gave me the idea to check it again (which I haven't done for almost a year before) and was thrown off since for each and every experiment I made it gave completely useless (to me, that is) answers. I then took the opportunity of you actively taking part in this thread to point these inaccuracies - as I have experienced them - out to you, in case you want to have a closer look.
So do we have an issue at all here? Maybe yes, maybe not. I'm undecided in that. Let me know if YOU want to actively look into it. If you think it helps I can send a mail to AdWords support. But as I said above, my campaigns are being served, so I'm not concerned (for the moment).
To get back to the very first message in this thread: I still think it would be a pretty good idea to get ANY sort of feedback from AdWords if the daily budget is hit. After all, that's a way for you to probabyl get more revenue :-)
Well, it froze me out on my 10th try when I had just set my daily budget to $0.25 or something stupid. So my ads didn't run that day.
Lesson learned.
The only suggestion I have is you might want to put some text on the page saying "You can change your budget X more times today" just so people see it coming before it hits them.
I have the same feeling, only positions reversed.
Heheh. Gotta love it.
So do we have an issue at all here? Maybe yes, maybe not. I'm undecided in that. Let me know if YOU want to actively look into it. If you think it helps I can send a mail to AdWords support. But as I said above, my campaigns are being served, so I'm not concerned (for the moment).
Ahhh. Got it now. I'm leaning heavily towards 'not an issue'. I really think this is in the realm of the normal.
...I still think it would be a pretty good idea to get ANY sort of feedback from AdWords if the daily budget is hit. After all, that's a way for you to probably get more revenue :-)
This is good feedback, and I'll pass it on. One thing I can say though, is that AdWords tries to minimize the number of emails that we send. And a 'budget has been hit' email per campaign per day could therefore amount to 25 emails per day, per advertiser - if each campaign had only one budget per day. And a lot more if the budget was changed often.
We have been experimenting with solutions though, including proactive emails when budgets have been routinely exceeded.
Still, one thing worth keeping in the back of one' mind: the AdWords system is really trying hard, moment to moment, to keep the ad running for the entire 24 hour day. And when it 'fails', as in the case of the very first post in this thread, it most often means the budget is simply too low, or the keywords too numerous, or too competitive (read: costly). And this is very much within the control of the advertiser to resolve.
...The only suggestion I have is you might want to put some text on the page saying "You can change your budget X more times today" just so people see it coming before it hits them.
Excellent point, martingale - and I've requested this very same thing myself (as has at least one other WebmasterWorld member, as I recall). I'll add it to the Advertiser Feedback Report again this week. ;)
AWA
One thing I can say though, is that AdWords tries to minimize the number of emails that we send.
This is well appreciated, especially regarding the sheer amount of (mostly unpleasant) emails your main competitor sends out. Let me use this occasion to say "Thanks" to the AdWords team. Within a day I got personalized mails from them pointing out some errors I made in the lading page URL (my intern got puzzled over "?" and "&" and ended up with the wrong one). That's good service!
And a 'budget has been hit' email per campaign per day could therefore amount to 25 emails per day, per advertiser - if each campaign had only one budget per day. And a lot more if the budget was changed often.
Well, maybe you can add some tweaking-factor into that. If you see a power-advertiser with a lot of campaigns, oyu probably only want to send him a single email per day.
For me, with currently 5 campaigns which have typically 3-5 adgroups, I'd appreciate an instant email as soon as the daily budget gets hit. For notification reasons though, a single email per day would be better than the current no-email-at-all policy :-)
For me, with currently 5 campaigns which have typically 3-5 adgroups, I'd appreciate an instant email as soon as the daily budget gets hit. For notification reasons though, a single email per day would be better than the current no-email-at-all policy :-)
Point well taken, pmkpmk, and I'll certainly pass on your feedback.
In the meantime, may I suggest something that has become a part of my AdWords 'ritual'? ;) In just a few seconds per day, it'll give you an excellent perspective on your budget - and almost certainly enough info to work with in terms of making ongoing budget decisions:
AWA's Suggested Daily AdWords Ritual:
* Log in to account daily (Actually, I'd call this step alone an important ritual for any advertiser!)
* On the page to which you're taken by default (Campaign Summary) set your date range tool to 'Yesterday'. This'll give you an accurate 'at-a-glance' view of how your actual accrued click costs compare to your daily budget, for each of your campaigns, for the previous 24 hour day. Repeated daily, it'll give you an extremely clear and useful picture.
* (Optional) While your there, maybe check the date range of 'Today' too, just as a reality check. (This will give you stats from midnight of the current day (PST) to about three hours before the time you're actually checking.)
AWA
This will give you stats from midnight of the current day (PST)
Another suggestion, if I may: probably the majority of AdWords advertisers don't live in the PST timezone. I have actually taken it for granted that the time intervals (today, yesterday, etc.) apply to my timezone since AdWords "knows" where I live because it has my address. Since this is obviously not the case and since on-the-fly conversion to the advertisers timezone might be a bit tricky, what about a live clock showing the AdWords@home time on top of each page? This would allow any advertiser to see with a quick glance how much of the advertisers day the "today" section actually covers.
