optimisation on vs optimisation off - what are the pros and cons?

[brucec]

I have 3 ads in one campaign. People are suggesting to turn off, but I don't know what the advantage of opt off is.

what are the pros and cons of opt off and opt on?

[RedWolf]

The ad optimization feature is designed to optimize for maximum revenue for Google by showing the ad that gets the highest CTR most often. This may or may not be best for you though. It is very possible that one of your ad copies is better at qualifying the people so that while fewer people click on the ad, a much higher percentage of them are real buyers not browsers. With ad optimization turned on, this great converting but low CTR ad will not be shown as often. I've seen some cases where the high CTR ad is shown 85% of the time or more. This optimization can happen very quickly within a day or less so you may not have time to see if one of your ads is better converting. For this reason you may want to run your new ads for a while with optimization turned off and check your own records to see which ad converts best and use it. I have the query string on my ad url's set so they identify the unique ad that they came from for this purpose.

[GuitarZan]

Hey,

Yeah definitely turn it off if you want to test multiple ads to see which one gets a better CTR. Also as RedWolf said, the stronger CTR ad may not convert better, yet it will be shown more just because it gets more clicks, knocking down the other ad that actually produces a better ROI.

RedWolf, I assume you add the string to the url, so they land on www.yoursite.com/ad1 (or 2/whatever), and then track to the final sale to see which ad actually produces a better ROI?

All the Best,

C.K.

[shorebreak]

AWA, if Google wants to apply its 'Don't be evil' philosophy to ad copy testing, wouldn't it be great for Google to offer a version of ad copy optimization where the ad copy is tested to see which *converts* best for advertisers? This would be a reason for advertisers to use your conversion tracking more often than they currently do, and would better achieve Google's long-term profitability by improving advertisers' ROAS and ultimately increasing their spend.

[Robsp]

I agree that this would be a great feature, but given the short term negative effect on G revenue I do not expect this any time soon :)

[eWhisper]

The other issue is that many people don't use Gs conversion tracking - so they need to implement something that works across all accounts, not some of them.

I could see this as a feature in addition to ad optimization, but it couldn't replace it.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

AWA, if Google wants to apply its 'Don't be evil' philosophy to ad copy testing, wouldn't it be great for Google to offer a version of ad copy optimization where the ad copy is tested to see which *converts* best for advertisers? This would be a reason for advertisers to use your conversion tracking more often than they currently do, and would better achieve Google's long-term profitability by improving advertisers' ROAS and ultimately increasing their spend.

Heh. Very interesting suggestion, shorebreak, and one that I've heard under discussion here a time or two. I'll pass your feedback on later this week, as a vote to make it happen. ;)

<added> I've just pasted your comment, verbatim, as the very first entry in this weeks report. Thanks! </added>

AWA

[marek]

Once I used a two-ad optimisation-off startegy for a branding campaign. I wanted to show my ads for a particular keyword that has very little direct business value and no competition. In the same time I prefered as few clicks as possible.

I set up an ad group with two ads -- one with almost zero CTR and second with average CTR of about 1,5% -- and let them rotate evenly. And it worked perfectly. My keyword got a little less than 1% CTR, just above the 0.5% disable limit and I did not pay too much for clicks.