I have a couple of clients whose target markets are very active over a small part of the 24 hour day (between 6pm and 9pm) and it would be great to deliver adwords campaigns just during these hours.
Of course you can do it manually but it is real pain and you will always forget to switch it on or off some days, and so ruin the whole effect.
I think this would be a great feature for most advertisers. Does anyone know if Google is planning such a feature?
Alternatively, is it possible to automate this using software etc? Surely someone must of thought of this?
Wouldn't it be geat if we could control the times of the day when the ads are shown?
I think it's pretty easy to do with the API. There are some simple scripts for Unix kicking around that you can run as a cron job.
I haven't dug into the API yet, but I intend to shortly. I think Google supports REST, which means that you can just use any command-line HTTP GET tool to accomplish it.
I have observed campaigns that do this. In particular, it seems that major movie studios time campaigns to run for new releases a couple of hours before showtime. After the last show, the ads are nowhere to be seen. They are probably paying close to the ticket price to guarantee the top slot in the blue box.
(I noticed this because I was advertising a book that a recent release was based on. One of my worst campaigns. Lookiloos. Don't ever advertise a book associated with a movie!)
We are willing to pay a reasonable fee for the software and the installation assistance.
Write to me at giovanni [at] adverbage [d0t] com
Thanks!