Which Ad is doing better?

testing ad performance

[johnharvard]

I have an ad group with 2 ads and I'm trying to figure out how to tell which ad performs the best. I can figure out which keywords are resulting in impressions and clicks but I can't figure out how to tell which ad was showing when that happened.

When I look at the "%Served" column on the Campaign Management screen, one ad is being served more often than the other but I don't know why. The wording of the 2 ads are similar so what makes one ad get served more often?

Thanks, John

[buckworks]

Unless you have chosen otherwise, the system will start to favour the ad(s) which get the best clickthrough rate, so that's likely why one ad is being served more than the other. You can expect the gap to grow if user response to the ads is significantly different.

Small variations in wording can have surprisingly large effects on user response, so it is good that you are testing more than one ad.

[netmeg]

You can go into the Campaign Settings and set the ads to rotate "more evenly" which will mostly take out Google's tendency to skew the results by showing the better performing ad more often.

[erickgamio]

That's right netmeg.

You have to ask Google to "Rotate ads more evenly" that's the only way you'll declare a true winner.

You should let the ads have at least 30 clicks to have a real winner. Fewer clicks than those, and you might keep an ad that just got lucky.

<Do some careful split testing> to check the probabilities on who's the real winner..

[edited by: buckworks at 7:59 pm (utc) on Dec. 1, 2009]
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