From 4th Oct, daily charges may be double your budget

monthly spend will apparently be unchanged

[FranticFish]

[support.google.com...]

What do people think about this?

Do people see a connection between Google encouraging everyone to use variable bidding and then rolling this out? My suspicious side can't help see this as a further way to create an increasingly black box in AdWords.

I use manual everything. I don't like the idea of automated bidding and I've even started using manual ad rotation and deselection this year (I have an idea that Google chooses the 'best-performing' ad too early on, and so far every new or relaunched campaign is performing better over time when I control which ads are retired).

What about campaigns where you don't have sufficient budget to show your ad all day? What effect will doubling the daily budget there have?

[buckworks]

I'm a bit uneasy about this new budget behaviour but I haven't noticed any problems ... yet.

campaigns where you don't have sufficient budget to show your ad all day

In that case reduce your bids. Lower bids can squeeze more visibility out of a limited budget.

I mostly agree with you about "manual everything".

[FranticFish]

Yes, I think where my budget is being exhausted I'll have to drop bids.

lower bids can squeeze more visibility out of a limited budget

I've never gone in for this as I prefer to keep CTR high. I've never read anything about Google considering the proportion of the time ads are 'on' as a ranking factor, so I've always proceeded on the assumption that a campaign with a higher CTR but less overall visibility is preferable to one with more visibility but lower CTR. Might have to test this, thanks.

[buckworks]

assumption that a campaign with a higher CTR but less overall visibility is preferable to one with more visibility but lower CTR

Yes, test this.

Measure success by the number of clicks you get. If you have a fixed budget and you're using it up, you'll get more clicks by reducing bids. It feels counterintuitive, but keep reducing until you find the balance point that uses up your budget with about five cents to spare.

The CTR will indeed be lower if your ads are in a lower position, but Google allows for that so it won't hurt you as an AdRank factor.

[FranticFish]

Thanks!