Overservice

Getting Worse?

[SClaw]

Being with a company who have a rather epic adwords budget, I have to be able to account for daily spending to make sure the credit card wont melt at the end of the month.

At the moment it seems that our ads are being over served every single day by at least a fifth of our daily budget. This accounts to a lot of money, which last month I noted was mostly not credited back.

I never had this problem until two months ago, when my ads would only be over served by a tiny amount on very rare occasions.

I have submitted a support request to adwords over this, but I'm interested to hear whether anyone else is having a similiar problem.

Am I just unlucky or is Google picking up a bad habit in general?

[briggidere]

hi sclaw,

if no one has already said this, welcome to webmasterworld. you'll get a lot from here.

With regard to your question. if you read
[adwords.google.com...] this explains how google may overbill you on a day but will not go over your monthly budget.

If you multiply your daily budget by the days in the month, this is what google aims to spend in a month, and should not go over it.

I hope this helps you.

briggidere

[edited by: eWhisper at 1:20 pm (utc) on Nov. 8, 2005]
[edit reason] Fixed Link [/edit]

[SClaw]

Thank you.

I'm aware of the monthly calculation they use, I was more curious as to why ads are suddenly being over served even though historically I've never had it happen so often. Nothing has changed in my account over the last three odd months. Was just wondering whether anyone else had encountered this.

And my bad on the other point - they had credited us back, I simply added it up wrong!

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, SClaw!

If I had to hazard a guess (and assuming that you have not lowered daily budget, raised Max CPC, added new keywords, added new Ad Groups, added new targeted countries or regions, etc.,) it would be that new sites have been added to the content and/or search networks, so you are getting more traffic.

BTW, if you notice that your budget is being exceeded on a regular basis, it's an almost sure sign that your daily budget is too low for the number (and competitiveness) of the keywords you're using.

One thing to consider, then, would be to do away with low performing keywords - in order to focus your budget on the ones that are really working for you.

AWA

[SClaw]

Thanks AWA.

Good way to look at it, and now I think about it it makes sense. In all probability it might be the competitiveness... this is a busy time of year for our industry and I'm aware we were running close to the budget mark for the rest of the year.

At any rate, I got a very pleasant message back from Adwords support who went over quite a few reasons - including that one. So all is well.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

At any rate, I got a very pleasant message back from Adwords support who went over quite a few reasons - including that one. So all is well.

Thanks for the follow up SClaw. ;)

AWA

[skibum]

If you are maxing your budget you may want to try going through and lowering some of your bids to a penny or two below the actual average CPC. Often this will lower the actual CPC significantly, there won't be much loss of position and you may increase traffic by 20% or more.

If the conversions remain relatively constant, your profit may go up significantly. Definitely need to keep a close eye on the results.

[SClaw]

Thanks for the tip skibum, I'll give that go.