Adwords - are two campaigns better than one?

Maximising your exposure

[claimsweb]

This may be a daft question but its been playing on my mind for some time so here goes:

I have a number of campaigns on Google Adwords but two of them are related to the same product or subject matter.

The first of these campaigns was set up 12 months ago when I was young and niaive about the adwords concept (still am!) but the ctr is still good so Ive retained it. My second related campaign is much neater with well constructed ad groups based on specific keywords or phrases and its doing ok with similar ctr.

Problem I have is whether to spread my load and advertise using both campaigns (it seems this gives you more air-time than just one campaign - yet I know that when your budgets blown the ad comes down anyway) OR whether it in fact is better to use only one campaign and stick with it developing ctr and boosting the ad position.

Are there any possible benefits / problems in splitting a campaign in this way?

Whats the view from the floor?

C

[hannamyluv]

Are you talking about advertising on the same keywords in the campaign? Are they in the same account?

If you are talking about same keywords, same account, adwords will rotate the ads so that you will not have two ads up at once. So, you are better off going with the best performing ad and shutting down the others.

If you are talking about different keywords, different campaigns, but related material then by all means, keep them going if they are doing well. The more keywords, the merrier.

If by chance you are talking about different accounts, same keywords in adgroups that go to the same place... well... adwords frowns on that. You may be getting double exposure but eventually adwords will figure it out and shut one down.

[claimsweb]

no its same keywords - same account

second campaign just breaks the kw down better and has 20 groups whereas the other one has 4 cumbersome / kw heavy groups.

[DaveN]

what about eb@y? they don't seem to have a problem

[google.com...]

Dave

[Shak]

what about eb@y? they don't seem to have a problem
[google.com...]

excellent point Dave.

maybe if it says "affiliate" it does NOT follow the normal rules, and allows multiple ads?

Shak

[hannamyluv]

That, or maybe if you buy a MILLION KWs, google waives all the rules for you. ;)

Affiliates are different. That's why they have to list themselves as affiliates.

Back to the main question. Dump the old groups, then. If your second group gets a better response and is put together better, you want them to appear all the time, and not have to share the limelight with your not so good ads.

[DaveN]

Ok lets say for arguments sake I run an company in highly competitive marketplace which loads of affiliates are in could I then run multiple adword campaigns and run them out of adwords.

Dave

[hannamyluv]

Not in the same account. You would have to set up several accounts and do it. When google found out that you were the same person/company, they would shut down all of the ads. If there are alot of affiliates, they would probably send an email to adwords to complain about the tatic, so you probably would be found out even faster.

If the keywords happen to be trademarked by your company, you can run the affiliates out by claiming trademark with Google.

There is one sneaky work around to all this that you could probably get away with it but since I firmly believe in karma and I would not want someone to do it to me, I will leave you to figure it out. ;)

[eWhisper]

There is a similiar discussion going on in the OV forum about companies that run multiple sites for the same company that you might like to read:

[webmasterworld.com...]