Google Analytics Features I'd Like To See #1

<rant>

I'm increasingly dismayed at how long it's taking to get new Content Network campaigns with image & flash ads up and running.

I have a situation with an account - it's not a new account by any means, it was around a long time before I took it over (and I've been around a long time too) It's doing quite well on the Content Network, but needs some organization in order to do better. I'm trying to break out some of the placements into their own campaigns, and it's taking *days* to get these campaigns up and running. I'm using the *exact same ads* that I have running in other campaigns, there's not one single new ad, yet a bunch of them are sitting "disapproved for content" for no reason that I can tell, and no reason that the AdWords support person I'm dealing with can tell. All he can do, he says, is "advocate" for me. Pardon me, but #*$!?

One of the large advantages Google has always had over the competition is the speed at which you can get up and running - particular with an account in good standing, handled by a manager in good standing, when all you're doing is moving things around - there's no new placements here (we're already delivering several million impressions a month to this site) and no new ads.

My takeaway from all this is that it's better to leave things *unorganized* because that's the only way to make sure they'll actually run. My client is losing money because of this delay. I can turn his account back into what it was, and I guess that's what I'm going to have to do.

Google needs to address this. You can't tell us it's better to organize our accounts properly, and then penalize us for trying to do so.

</rant>

Many thanks for all the latest additions here, which will copy/pasted, verbatim, into this week's Advertiser Feedback Report - which, as an interesting (to me at least, hahah!) point of reference is report #294.

Still plenty of time for other feature requests - conservatively, about 14 hours from the time I posted this.

Aside to netmeg regarding approval times: Are you able to put your finger on when you started to see this? It'll help me to look into it.

Aside to irish_john regarding your post: can you tell me more about when and where you are seeing this?

Thanks!

AWA

It's been getting slowly but steadily worse, but this week took the cake. Campaign was created last Friday. As of this morning, it's still sitting there, NOT running, with *disapproved* ads that are exactly the same ads that are running in other campaigns, and have been running for months if not years. I still have an open issue on it, but I haven't heard back since being told all the rep could do was "advocate" for me. My client is absolutely livid.

I am not sure if this has been brought up, but I would love it if we could use our Adsense earnings to fund our Adwords campaigns.

Should make sense? Less accounting for all involved. No issues with credit card spend limits, no waiting for funds in, less overhead all around. If the Adsense 'credits' are used up, then draw from the CC.

This particular horror story has taken a decided turn for the worse. Both Google and I are about to lose a client over Google's handling of this Content Network issue.

My real number one request is still (Think I first posted this in 03/04):

A list of new pages, page changes, or a change history for the AdWords help files.

I'd very much like the option to select Google Search Partners but not Google Search itself in the campaign settings.

Currently deselecting Google Search automatically deselects Google Search Partners.

Thanks to one and all for all the latest posts since last week. They'll all be in the Advertiser Feedback Report shortly.

I'm running way behind this week, so not sure when the report will go out - but probably in about five hours from now.

New posts will happily be included. I'll check back just before sending.

Thanks!

AWA

Impression Share Reports on an Ad Group level (instead of only campaigns)

I've included your late-breaking feedback in tonights report, moderngamer - many thanks!

AWA

For next week...

I'd like to exclude local business ads from running on Google.com. Too often the local ad shows instead of the much more appropriate text ad.

Any chance of being able to have a Campaign setting for targeting specific user platforms (PC vs. Mac etc.)? I see that targeting the iPhone is being considered, so it's kind of like an extension of that feature.

More accurate normalized QS for ad position...

Scenario's I'm faced with on multiple keywords:

1. I setup 1 ad on [keyword1] bidding $1.00 a click.
2. Before anything runs, instant 7 QS
3. 7 competitors on [keyword1]
4. It runs for a week getting a 9% CTR, now the QS is 8, avg. position 1.1, min. bid .04
5. I lower the max bid to .16
6. After 5-7 days same exact ad: avg. position: 6.6, CTR 0.6%, QS 6, min. bid .20

If it's the same exact ad and all I do is lower the bid, why is the QS changing so much if the CTR is actually normalized by position? Clearly it isn't. If I raise the bid back up, the ad position rises, and the CTR goes back up to ~9% and the QS goes back to 8. Then I lower the bids again repeating this whole process. Doesn't make sense, unless the normalization is incorrectly calculated.

Another really strange scenario I keep getting:

1. I setup 1 ad on [keyword2] bidding $0.21 a click.
2. Before anything runs, instant 7 QS
3. 2 other competitors on [keyword2]
4. After a week, 2% ctr, 7 QS, avg. position 2.2, min. bid .05
5. I lower the bid to .06 and let it run for a day or so.
6. About same avg. position: 2.4, but CTR plummets to .3% and thus the QS changes to 6, min. bid: .20
7. I raise the bid to .20 and the avg. position stays the same, but the CTR rises back to 2% after a day and the QS goes back to 7.
8. I can repeat this over and over. It's almost as if Google is showing my ad to bad traffic to make my QS go lower in hopes that I'll raise my bid permanently.

Can you pass this along and see if it can be fixed?

Thanks to all who have posted since last week - and there is still plenty of time for further additions. :)

The Advertiser Feedback Report will be sent in about 6 to 7 hours from now - and I'll certainly check back at least a couple of times before then.

Best,

AWA

Somewhat related to my Content Network issues of last week (which are now resolved, thanks to @AdWordsProSarah and others) I'm still working on organizing this one somewhat large account, and I can't help feeling like in some ways, we get penalized for trying to get things straightened out and organized properly.

If I break out placements that I'm already serving to, so that I can target them, I have to wait some interminable amount of time before my ads start up (unless I again run into a problem like I had before with ad approvals, which will require a week full of hissy fits to get it going)

If I move keywords, ads and placements around to where it makes more sense, I have to figure on several days to a week's worth of downtime for the exact same keywords, the exact same ads, the exact same placements to be approved and start running again.

I can maybe understand on a fairly new account, but this one's been active for years and years. At this point I'm not even adding anything new at all, just moving things around, and I have to wait, and I'll lose history, and odds are I'm gonna have to get into an argument about my ad approvals every time too.

It's not much of an incentive to properly manage an account. In fact, it's pretty darn discouraging. The unconscious message is, if it's more or less working, leave it alone. But more or less working isn't good enough for me, and it shouldn't be good enough for Google. I want it to work *better*

Got it netmeg - many thanks!

AWA

I can hardly believe it - and not quite sure how it happened.

It appears as if I've finished the report early - so I'm calling it done for this week.

Hope there are lots of new posts for next week, though. I'll happily quote them, verbatim.

Thanks,

AWA

<edit> Add missing word </edit>

[edited by: AdWordsAdvisor at 3:33 am (utc) on April 17, 2009]

On the Keyword Tool, I wish there was another save option in addition to "Save to Ad Group" which would allow one to save one's work and continue using the keyword tool. Perhaps it could be called "Save & Continue Research".

Thanks for the addition, cline. It's now in this week's report.

Seems like it's been a while. Nice to see your name again. :)

AWA

A quick update: the Advertiser Feedback Report goes out about 4 to 5 hours from the time I post this - and, as always, I'll happily include any late breaking additions.

Thanks in advance. ;)

AWA

AdWords Ad Feedback

We're supposed to copy the full link of an ad and paste it into the URL field. The form would not accept any URL but the full URL from AdWords results only.

What about if we are reporting an ad showing in US while being in other country so we have to use AdWords preview tool?
People outside from US cannot see ads in US just by using Google.com.

Allow advertisers to easily see what sites allow placement targeting, category targeting within a site, and page level targeting.

I think the best place for this feature is the adPlanner.

I can't count the number of times I've exported a list from the adPlanner and upon importing them into the placement tool; the sites either weren't available for placements or Google said the site wasn't available for placement targeting. However, if you do a keyword search in the placement tool, the site was actually available for placement targeting.

Google is creating extra work for advertisers trying to determine where you can actually use placements, or making a lot of adPlanner research time useless as you have to search for the sites all over again in the AdWords placement targeting tool.

Thanks for the latest feedback, which I have just copied into the Advertiser Feedback report that'll go out tomorrow.

It is especially nice to see you posting in this this thread again, eWhisper!

The report will be sent roughly 33 hour from the time I post this - so lots of time (not to mention space in the report) for further additions to this thread.

Thanks again,

AWA

Just thought I'd bring this thread back to the top of the page one more time - in advance of the report going out in about 5 to 6 hours. ;)

Best,

AWA

Quality score normalized by hour. Late night hours have lower CTR than normal business hours. This can cause a border line QS6-7 keyword to go to QS6 at 1am-7am and not get back to QS7 until 11am or so the next day.

If the bids are set lower than the min. bid for a QS6 keyword, the ads for this keyword won't even run until the bids are manually changed.

Example, bids set at .11, (QS6 min. bid is .20 if there is no competition). Keywords won't ever get back to QS7 if they aren't running with bids at .20 (they can't get traffic to prove the system it should be QS7, because the min. bid just went to .20 over night). I'm having to change the bid from .11 to .20 to .11 each day.

[edited by: JoeT321 at 5:46 am (utc) on May 1, 2009]

I missed getting your request in last week's report, Joe321, but have just copy/pasted it into this weeks report.

Still plenty of time for other requests before the report goes out this week - at least six hours and probably more.

As always, I'll check back before for late-breaking additions before I hit 'Send'.

Thanks in advance,

AWA

When I'm changing bids on ad group level (in campaign), and select multiple ad groups, I have to change one by one. There are cases where regardless of the current bids, I want to increase them all for, i.e., 10 cents.
It would be nice if I can just select all ad groups and set the increment, by value, or by percentage (like in advanced scheduling).

Thanks

Got it smallcompany - thanks!

Still an hour or two to go, and I'll check back just before sending to see if there is anything else to be included. ;)

Best,

AWA

We have big campaign season when we have to created mutiple geo-targeted campaigns. Most our locations are in latitude and longitude format such as 40.434436, -80.024817.

1.We have to use comma and space in between them because otherwise adwords will automatically turn them into text addresses that we can't recognize.

2.We have to manually input those nums and check every campaigns' settings though the locations are same - the location custom seletion got no bulk edit for latitudes and longitudes.That caused a lot of troubles.

Hope there can be bulk edit for location froms in latitudes and longitudes.

Thanks.

*forms