PPC Bidding

Shopping Campaign Parameters

Shopping Campaign Serving Parameters

When setting up shopping campaign serving parameters, bidding is the central issue. Manual bidding at launch is the best way to force shopping campaigns to develop serving momentum quickly.

The manual bidding period provides a baseline to optimize against going forward. It also provides confirmation that we’re bidding up to the “Benchmark” shopping bid level. 

When setting up serving schedules, our scheduling preference is usually to allow the campaigns to initially run 24x7x365 Many campaigns perform well at surprising times, during days of the week and hours of the day you might not expect.

In some b2b eCommerce markets, we will run campaigns on weekdays only and perhaps not overnight. There are time zone spans to consider, for example in the US, making sure East coast campaigns stay on late enough to shop up for West coast end-of-day business traffic.

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Video Campaign Object Model Serving Parameters

Video Campaign Serving Parameters

When a new video campaign is launched, we will set and adjust bids manually for the first week or two. This is the fastest way to ramp up a campaign, andit establishes a baseline to compare with results from other types of bidding. 

Manual bidding is the best way to force a new campaign to serve on YouTube, so enough data can be accumulated to nurse the campaigns onto automated bidding.

Video campaigns allow Sitelink ad extensions which tend to perform very well so we configure those. We also like the new Lead Form extensions. In a video campaign Google can auto-fill most of the fields. 

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Display Campaign Serving Parameters

Display Campaign Serving Parameters

When setting up display campaign serving parameters, our preference is usually to allow the campaigns to initially run 24x7x365. We can then use that data to optimize the campaign schedule, as we have measured what times and days of the week are most effective. 

In some b2b markets, we will run campaigns on weekdays only and perhaps not overnight. There are some common mistakes to avoid, for example in the US making sure East coast campaigns stay on late enough to shop up for West coast end-of-day business traffic.

The reason for running campaigns (at least initially) 24×7 is that many campaigns perform well at surprising times – days of the week, and hours of the day you would not expect.

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Search Campaign Parameters

Configure Search Campaign Serving Parameters

Ad Spend: Search campaigns may fall victim to the “digital cliff” phenomena as seen in telecommunications and economics. As a rule of thumb, a search campaign should be purchasing at least 15 to 20 clicks daily.

Geo Targeting: Controls the relationship(s) between search query and ad serving locations.

Bidding: Influences when a campaign participates in an ad auction, rank at ad auction, and which search engine result pages the ads appear on.

Campaign Serving Schedule: We set most b2c search campaigns to serve 24x7x365. We later use this baseline data to optimize the serving schedule.

Ad Rotation: For faster optimization, we launch most new search campaigns with 2 extended text ads (ETAs) rotating evenly. Later we phase in responsive search ads (RSAs).

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