Adcopy

Adcopy advice, legit advice.

[Matthewdwatson]

I've read so many blogs and threads about ad copy that I can't see straight. Is it possible that the first ad I ever chose as a adwords amateur was the best I could ever achieve? I've tested no less than 100 different ads and the original seems to be the best. Spending $120k this month and a better CTR would sure take the sting out of it.

[wheel]

I'd bet you've got something else going on. Have you turned off that automated ad serving thing they have that serves the higher CTR ads more frequently (sorry, I forget the name). Turn that off so that if you have two ads, they are served each 50% of the time. This is not the default when a campaign is set up!

I like to see 1000 impressions before making a decision. Make sure you're not jumping too quick.

If you've got a good ad, change small things only as you test. i.e 'fast and easy' will perform differently than 'easy and fast'. Even small changes like that can make a difference.

Don't test randomly. Know what changes you're making to the next ad you're testing, and why.

[eWhisper]

FYI - what wheel is referring to is the ad optimizer. In your campaign settings, there is a checkbox next to 'Automatically optimize ad serving for my ads'. That needs to be turned off in ad testing.

The question I have is:
Are you testing CTR?
OR testing conversion rate/profit by ad?

A high CTR ad is often not as good as a low CTR higher converting ad.

[Matthewdwatson]

Great call Wheel and Ewhisper. I actually hired a firm called Did-it Search marketing which was supposed to test all of this for me which clearly didn't happen.
So what you are saying is that my ads were not able to get a true read because the weighting adwords was giving to existing ads that were served the highest percentage of time. Therefore the test was way off.
I'll give it a run again. Thanks for the advice.

[JayCee]

Remember that it's best to create a new version of your ad from scratch and only delete the old one if the new one takes off and does better.

New (or edited) ads can take time to be reviewed again by Google, if you are using the content network, not just the search index.