When do you know its time to bail out?

how many impressions?

[ds98127]

Hi,
A clickthrough of 0.5% is needed (minimum) as yu all know. The question is
a-) what size of sample should i take before assuming reasonably that this campaign/ad group will not work ( should i drill down country by country as well and check hard? ..this could either be thorugh logs or through referral URLs ..different ad groups for each country) in terms of achieving CTR
b-) Is it a violation of TOS if i click on my own ad to sustain the program ....
c-) I have been trying at a plethora of ads but seems people just don't like it ...what works and what writing style does not work , any example would be fantastic
d-) There is a subsection on adwrods functioning which i don't get
If none of the sponsors can achieve a CTR required then?
Is it just to ask everyone on the page to achieve that min CTR , should it not be lax for those at lower end ( I know that leads to a lot of malafide ideas but still..)

The best thing about google adwords is the daily budget which i don't see in another ppc. Can't allow myself to wake up one morning looking at a huge hole in my account, that sort of a risk is scary
Thanks
Niko

[eWhisper]

what size of sample should i take before assuming reasonably that this campaign/ad group will not work

These two threads address this issue:
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

As far as clicking on your own ad, G will not count duplicate clicks, so it doesn't do you any good to waste your time repeatedly clicking.

If you've tried that many ads with no results, its time to look at the KWs and not the ads. Redefine your KW list to very specific terms and work from there.

More on creating an account & KWs in recent post:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[Tropical Island]

If none of the sponsors can achieve a CTR required then?

Then they will remove all ads. We have two terms where our keywords are disabled and there are no other keywords for those terms - they are mispellings. Funily enough every now and then impressions begin to appear although the word is disabled.

Since Jan. 15th one disabled keyword has had 181 impressions with a CTR of 5.5% and the other has had 307 impressions with a CTR of 2.9%. I just leave them disabled and cover more specific phrases using the keyword.

[eWhisper]

Funily enough every now and then impressions begin to appear although the word is disabled.

I think, although I can't find the thread, that AWA mentioned that disabled words will be shown on occasion to see if they start to gather a higher ctr, so you will see some impressions for disabled KWs.

Although, I don't remember the specifics, I don't think he mentioned what happened if the word started getting the CTRs you were talking about - would G undo the disabled KW and add it to slowed or 'at risk' status automatically, or is it just info for the advertiser to restore the KW manually.