How to handle large scale campaigns

[Ben ShopBloc]

I am fairly new to the whole AdWords realm, but would like some input on the best way to get started. My company would like to launch a large scale campain to incorperate roughly 10,000 products to be featured on AdWords. The little that i have used AdWords, I have found that it is very difficult to monitor and manage these ads against inventory. (eg. if we go out of stock on an item being advertised we want to stop paying for clicks for that item). Is there any way to submit a feed to Google in order to manage this? I have been investigating my competition, and can't seem to make sense of how they can handle that many ad campains at once.

Also, i have heard rumors that there is a massive price reduction on the CPC after you have spent a certain amount on AdWords... Does anybody know if there is any truth to that?

Any insight on these subjects would be greatly appreciated.

Ben

[smallcompany]

Not aware that AdWords has anything that would help you with maintaining your ads based on your inventory. It would be up to you to use their API and develop application that would watch the two: ads on AdWords and inventory on other side. If you’re successful, you can even go out and start selling it! :)

The other question, I don’t think so. One thing that does play role is the history of your keywords. The longer you were in game and have long history of well performing keywords and ads, the lesser should be your CPC. I am guessing that is where that what you’ve heard has come from.

[Ben ShopBloc]

Thank you for the reply! This is the first time i am hearing of this API, what all does this API have the capability of doing? If i'm understanding you correctly, i should be able to create a system utilizing the API that communicates with AdWords to be able activate/deactivate the campains.... possibly change the bids for individual campains as well? What language do you need to write to be able to develop with the API? Any information you can give about the API would be useful.

Thanks,
Ben

[smallcompany]

he, he... I am the one that is crying every night about some API ideas.

Here are some links:

[google.com...]
[google.com...]

... and other if you Google "google adwords api"

[tomasvdb]

it is fairly easy to integrate stock monitoring with adwords using the API. But it will require a lot of programming if you have to start from scratch. Also remember that using the API is not free, unlike using the adwords website or adwords editor.

[Ben ShopBloc]

Thank you for the information! I am just a DBA, so i know SQL, and can read C#, but that's about as far as my programming skills go. How difficult would you say it would be for me to attempt this project of building the program to interact with the API?

Thanks again,
Ben

[tomasvdb]

difficult enough to hire someone to do it :)

or you could outsource your campaign management to someone else who already has developed the system you need...

[Ben ShopBloc]

That's what i figured, it doesn't hurt to hope it will be easy though :). Also tomasvdb, you mentioned above that it is not free to use the API... I have looked into the links above and at first glance i don't seem to see anything about a charge. Do you have a link to explain about the additional cost?

Thanks again for all the insight!
Ben

[poster_boy]

Also remember that using the API is not free, unlike using the adwords website or adwords editor.

It is free - for some. From the API URL noted above:

Google AdWords API developers are charged US$0.25 (or local currency equivalent) per 1000 API units consumed. The rate sheet defines how different API operations consume varying amounts of API units. While some operations consume just one unit, other types consume more. For example, a single transaction that adds 20 keywords consumes a total of 1000 units, which means a fee of $0.25 will be charged for that specific transaction.

Visit the API Rate Sheet in the Developer's Guide to view specific unit costs per function.

Please note that certain developers who design proprietary applications to advertise their own businesses may be eligible for free API unit allocations.

[shorebreak]

Ben_ShopBloc,

Allow me to save you a ton of time and heartache:

1)Don't try to build an AdWords management system. There are a large number of software-as-a-service solutions out there (Marin Software & Clickable are two recently, next-gen ones that I like a lot), as well as SEM agencies that bring strong technologies to bear (Efficient Frontier - where I worked for 4 years - is one, and there are several others).

2)Lean on an outside firm to help you with keyword generation, correct keyword-level tracking, metrics definition, and [most importantly] ROI data modeling.

3)Because click-through-rate and landing page quality are the primary determinants of your success in AdWords, focus most of your efforts there and leave the day-to-day keyword campaign creation and management to an outside firm that does that for a living.

IMO, reinventing either the SEM technology or management wheel is a waste of time in light of the need to improve ad copy and onsite conversion rates day in and day out.

-Shorebreak

[Ben ShopBloc]

Thank you everybody for your insight on this subject!
Is there such a thing as a 3rd party software that utilizes both Google Adwords API and Yahoo! Search Marketing API? I will look into any 3rd party software that i can find to see if it would be worth persueing. I am really just looking for something that i can submit a feed to, or link to a db, to be able to change bid amounts, and to pause campains depending on if the item is in stock or not that handles both Google Adwords and Yahoo! SM. Is this something that can be obtainable through a "management group" type of business that you are refering to?

Thanks again,
Ben

[shorebreak]

Marin Software & Clickable are two recent, next-gen ones that I like a lot.

There's another recent WebmasterWorld thread on the topic of tools that work across multiple search engines:

[webmasterworld.com...]

-Shorebreak

[Ben ShopBloc]

It seems to me that most (if not all) of these do not offer inventory management. Is this something that is abnormal? After speaking with a few of these companies, they simply create a console to integrate both google and yahoo and show you stats... but no inventory monitoring. What i would like is a company that does the above, but also allowes for a feed to be sent to pause/start campains. Is there anybody that does that?

Thanks,
Ben

[smallcompany]

I sent you a sticky yesterday as I would not post a link to a specific product as it is against the TOS of this forum. Those guys already have exactly what you asked about: Inventory driven Google AdWords API based management system. In addition, they do custom development. They are from Bulgaria.

[Ben ShopBloc]

SmallCompany, thank you for the link... I'm still getting used to how this forum works :). It seems like they only work with X-Cart shopping carts out of the box.. at least that's in the technical requirements. Do you happen to know if they can support full custom shopping carts? Also it seems like the "out of the box" software is only for Google. So it would need to be a custom development to be able to create the tools i am looking for. Is there maybe anybody else that offers the inventory function but with all the major PPC avenues? I will contact these guys directly, but its nice to have an "Inside Scoop" from the user side.

Also, all of these products seem to be priced pretty high without having much on proved ROI... Have any of you utilized these services and seen a good turn-around?

Thank you for your time,
Ben