Bad Adwords

How did I get screwed on Adwords

[AlchemyV]

My client got screwed on Adwords big time. Despite Google having already refunded some of the clicks. It just simply doesnt make sense how the content ad suddenly receives 200,000 impressions per day from 10,000 in the same month.

I know there's a process and algorithm in place to detect bad clicks but it just doesnt seem enough. So I'm trying to prove my case. I have tried things like using analytics to count the average time on site for the dubious clicks - figuring these wont be too long if they're fake.

Does anyone have any ideas of tell tale signs for bad adwords or any further analysis I can do?

[Zuckerman]

Did you receive a significant increase in clicks, or just impressions? I've found that when the bids on my content campaigns reach the point where I'm in position 3 & above, the number of impressions skyrockets (since there are 3 ads on the content network etc). If my ads aren't properly targeted, clicks can also skyrocket without necessarily converting.

Are you able to track the source of the bad clicks to a particular address?

[AlchemyV]

Impressions and clicks, this was all in the content network.

I have the use of analytics and adwords reports, just trying to see what baselines I can set and then try and see any obvious variances. any ideas?

[Tropical Island]

I've been running AdWords reports on the URL's of my content advertising after I noticed a huge increase in impressions.

I discovered that I am getting thousands of impressions from Gmail, YouTube & MySpace. None which, by the way resulted in many clicks & no conversions.

Using site exclusion I blocked YouTube & MySpace while leaving Gmail. That cut the daily number of impressions back quite a bit with no impact on clicks. I am still balancing whether to block Gmail.

[AlchemyV]

I'm wondering whether to stop content network altogether!

[DamonHD]

Hi,

I've been using the AW option to optimise for conversion cost, which means that G could/should automatically weed out bad sources (amongst other things) for you that you'd never even have the data for.

That makes the content network a safer place for advertisers IMHO.

So far, using that and (separately) PPA, I've reduced conversion cost by about 20% albeit on small budgets.

Rgds

Damon

[netmeg]

Just getting rid of youtube.com and myspace.com made a huge difference in reducing impressions on most of my accounts.