Optimizing Adgroups

What to do with the low performers?

[patient2all]

Hi,

Looking for general opinions

Assuming Ad Optimization is off and a campaign has a large # of AdGroups:

• Is there any advantage in moving the lower performing AdGroups (say CTR < 1.0) out of one campaign and relegating them to their own campaign?

• Will there be any benefit to having only the better AdGroups remaining in the original campaign?

• With Optimization turned off, does AdWords ever take the campaign's overall performance (CTR) into account when making decisions as to matching flexibility, ad showing, "Normal"/"In Trial" keyword quotas?

• Will the former presense of the underperforming AdGroups in the original campaign never be forgiven, even if they are moved?

• Would there be any advantage in "Pausing" or "Deleting" them rather than moving them to their own campaign?

----

These AdGroups with poor CTRs still have some benefit since they sell a widget here and there at minimal cost so I'm reluctant to simply delete them, especially if their poor performance is going to haunt the original campaign or entire account forever anyway.

For the most part, they represent unanticipated poor keyword strategy when they first got started, mostly because certain keywords had dual meanings.

Until now, I've been prone to thinking everything is analyzed at the keyword level, but I'm starting to ponder what benefits, if any, are granted to the more successful campaigns or for that matter the more successful accounts.

Thanks for any input,

patient2all

[james_allot]

Is there any advantage in moving the lower performing AdGroups (say CTR < 1.0) out of one campaign and relegating them to their own campaign?

Advantages:-
1) Track the conversion rates for the lower performing adgroups separately.

2)Becomes easy for management, if we segregate lower performing adgroups from higher performing adgroups.

3)Monitoring can also become easy.

Will there be any benefit to having only the better AdGroups remaining in the original campaign?

Overall Campaign CTR will be high if we keep only better performing adgroups in the original campaign.
But the overall account CTR will still be same (assuming that the adgroups under new campaign shows similar performance as in original campaign). The benefits which you get in separating the non performing adgroups in new campaign is listed in first question. Other than that there is no direct advantage in keeping only better performing adgroups in original camnpaign.

With Optimization turned off, does AdWords ever take the campaign's overall performance (CTR) into account when making decisions as to matching flexibility, ad showing, "Normal"/"In Trial" keyword quotas?

This is what Adwords Support has to say for "In Trial" keyword quotas:-

There are a limited number of in trial keywords per account, so when this limit is reached, additional keywords will be moved to on hold status with priority given to those keywords with higher predicted CTRs.

It clearly states that "in trial" keyword quotas are allocated per account, so Overall CTR of the account must be taken into consideration before allocating those quotas.

As far as keyword matching flexibility goes it depends on the CTR of that keyword and ad showing on the daily budget and provided that the searched keyword status is not one of "in trial/On hold or disabled".

Please correct me if I'm wrong anywhere.

[patient2all]

James,

That's pretty much what I thought too. So, in the end, you are evaluated at only two levels.

The very lowest - keyword level

- and -

The very highest - Account level

In essence, one is never forgiven by Google for past mistakes and can only forge ahead with better keyword choices in the hope of future success. Experimentation becomes permanentely punishing save for the lessons learned.

Kind of like life, they won't let me start that over either :)

Thanks,

patient2all