Do you recognize this behavior?

New campaigns starts like crazy, than stopped.

[fischermx]

I recently created new adgroups in old content-only campaigns.
They were ad groups with 3 ads, and no more than 50 keywords, with a very narrow topic.
I set a budget of $10.00 daily, and a max CPC of $0.10.

After a couple of hours my ads appeared in the content network.... hundreds of impressions, no, wait, thousands.... actually more than a hundred thousands impressions, with a very low CTR of like 0.6%, of course.
Then after say, 4 or 5 hours, the ads stopped to show and it didn't restart for the rest of the day.
That happened on Monday, then yesterday, and today, a new different campaign each day.
Why?

:(

[MadeWillis]

Have your ads been rejected for some reason?

[fischermx]

BTW, ads are being shown, of course in the Content network.
I remember it used to be that when one setup a new campaign, say that have both Search and Content network as target, it started to show on the search and then it took a couple of days to get approved on the content network.
But now, it seems like automatic.

[fischermx]

No they are still marked as active.
BTW, in the a content-only campaign, how do I know, if the max CPC is not enough?
There's no indication of this anywhere in the panel.
If I see the keywords list, it says Status as Active, and on the keywords analisis icon, it says "This campaign is set to show ads only on the content network. To test this keyword, your campaign must be on the search network".
So?

[netmeg]

are you in myspace and youtube?

[fischermx]

What do you mean by being in myspace and youtube?
My ads are for IT related keywords.

[Anakii]

There are a few possibilities, one that comes to mind is having a budget of only $10 a day may be limiting it. I have had it happen for a few campaigns before and it was fixed by lifting the Daily cap.

Do you still receive the impressions for the same campaign the next day or do they not restart at all?

[fischermx]

Nope! they just worked like 3 hours each.
They worked one day, stopped and stay there.

And respecting the daily budget, well, it did not even take the $10.00, it stopped like in $3 or $4.

[Anakii]

Also in regards to the max cpc for content only campaigns, the main way to monitor if it is high enough it to watch your avg position. If it is below 3.5 or 4 then your bid is probably to low and will have a lower CTR.

I know you said your keywords were very targeted which is great. Having between 10-20 keywords per ad is generaly recomended for the content network.

On the content network (i could be wrong) but it does not bring up your ad based on an individual keyword. Your ads get shown based upon the 'theme' of your ads and group of keywords rather than a keyword search.

[Anakii]

For our campaigns we would have a budget of $200, it would never reach even $100 so we increased it to $500 and it seemed to increase our impressions. We also improved our sites as well which helped.

If these campaigns (websites) didn't go so well in the past google remembers them, so your site may need to be optimized before google is happy with the new ads.

[netmeg]

What do you mean by being in myspace and youtube?
My ads are for IT related keywords.

I mean, have you specifically excluded myspace.com and youtube.com from your campaigns? If I was seeing weird bursts like this, and I hadn't excluded these sites from my campaign (which I do now by default on EVERY Content Network campaign) then I might think that Google's peculiar idea of matching might be pulling them up on myspace or youtube next to some page or video or song that itself was experiencing a burst of traffic. Run a site placement report and see where these ads are actually appearing. And consider excluding them from myspace, youtube, and domain parking, if you haven't already.

On the content network (i could be wrong) but it does not bring up your ad based on an individual keyword. Your ads get shown based upon the 'theme' of your ads and group of keywords rather than a keyword search.

That's true. And actually, I believe the name of the Ad Group has quite a bit to do with the targeting as well.

[fischermx]

What monster I've just found:

A Philippine site about horse racing.

A Thai site about who knows, because it is password protected.

A friend finder sort of website.

A wrestling game website.

:(

[wrgvt]

If most of your traffic is coming from Asia, maybe it drops off naturally as it gets later into the night there.

[blue_eagle]

You had a daily cap on account.

[fischermx]

What daily cap?
You mean budget?
The budget was not even fully expended.

[wanderer1985]

There are many reasons that I can think of for your dilema fischermx. Apart from that, content keywords dont have a min cpc. They can never go inactive unlike the search campaign keywords.

1. You set the campaign in accelerated mode. Google then starts showing ads in a hurry and as soon as your budget for the day is up, it stops your ads.
2. As its already being pointed out, may be your budgets are already expended in the first 3-4 hrs.
3. Since you mentioned that one of your campaigns did not consume the total $10 but stopped at $3-$4. This might be because you have bid too low in content for the ads to be shown in the top positions. In this case, your ads will not have the enough number of impressions to get the clicks. This has happened to me earlier. Try increasing the max bids of adgroups/keywords in your content campaign. This will definitely expend your $10 budget and also give you more impressions.

[blue_eagle]

If it is a new account your account will be under review. Contact them to ask to lift the cap from your account.