Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Google AdWords recently ran a Beta of a monthly budget option. Instead of just the daily budget option, where Google would cap your spend each day regardless of demand, you could set a monthly budget (which was computed by multiplying your daily budget by 30.44, the average number of days in a month) where the daily spend could fluctuate. If you had a low traffic day and didn’t spend your daily ppc advertising budget, the excess could be applied to the following day or days, just as long as you stayed within your monthly budget total at the end of the month.

It’s a great concept, especially if you really want to hit your monthly spend and your traffic fluctuates a lot by day. Here at JumpFly, we’ve tested it for a few of our clients that were in the Beta and were pleased with the results, but as with all new things, there’s a learning curve. Here’s one of the biggest “catches” to the monthly budget, which could bite you if you didn’t know about it and react accordingly.

If you reduce your budget at some point during the month, the total budget for the month decreases which can actually back-fire in constraining how much you spend for the remainder of the month. For example, my client had a $7000 per month spend, which comes out to $229.96 per day. About 2/3 of the way through the month, we split out a portion of the existing campaign into new one, and allocated a portion of the $7,000 to the new budget. I reduced the daily budget on the existing campaign to $179.98.

Now here’s where it gets tricky. Google takes the $179.98 times 30.44 (average number of days in a month) to figure out the new monthly budget, which is $5478.59. I’d already spent $4829.16 for the month. Subtract what I spent from my new monthly budget and I have a total of $649.43 to spend for the remaining 10 days – or $64.94 per day, which is less than 1/3 of what I actually wanted to spend. I’ll be honest, it took me several days to figure out why this account had a decrease in impressions and spend. Everything LOOKED fine – the daily budget still said $179.98, the monthly still said $5478.59. I wasn’t getting any messages that my budget was being constrained. I was just about to call my dedicated Google rep for help, when I decided to investigate a little deeper into monthly vs. daily budgets, and there was my answer. Google’s help page says that if you do reduce your budget during the month, they’ll remind you of the number of days left in the month and how the budget change could affect your account, but I don’t remember seeing any type of message that warned me.

So, if Google releases Monthly Budgeting to all AdWords customers, it’s something that might be worth trying. Just remember, as with most Google tools, there’s nuances that can catch you if you are not careful.

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Google just launched the new beta version of the Display Ad Builder Tool. This very cool new tool allows you to create and customize image, animated and Flash ads for the Google AdWords Content Network.

To access this new tool, simply go to your content campaign. You do have separate campaigns for content don’t you? Then click the “Ad Variations” tab. Next to “Create new ad:” you will find the usual selections of: Text ad, Image ad, Local business ad, Mobile ad, Click-to-play video ad and the new Display Ad Builder. You really can’t miss it since it has NEW! in large red letters right next to it.

Once inside the Display Ad Builder Tool you will find dozens of unique animated templates to use as your starting point. There are several pre-designed ad formats based on different industries like; travel, finance, automotive, ecommerce, etc. These all make excellent starting points for your new display ad, and Google promises to be releasing many more as the feature moves out of beta.

After you pick your new template you will be taken to the page that allows you to customize the ad with all of your own information. There are text fields for headlines and descriptions, and you can easily change the font colors if you wish. As you proceed, there is a button labeled “update preview” located underneath the ad, and you will want to periodically click this button to see the results of your modifications.

Tip* Depending on the template, you may need to have some custom logos and product images available. If your logo’s file size is too large, you may need to reduce it to the maximum size shown. Usually this is about 50k. If this seems too daunting of a task, simply choose one of the other templates that does not display a logo. There are plenty to choose from.

So, you have customized your new display ad. The next step is to click “Continue” located at the bottom of the page.

You are now on the preview and ad variations page. As you will see, the Display Ad Builder Tool automatically generates your new ad into several of the common sizes including medium and large rectangles, leader boards, as well as the popular skyscraper formats. Different templates are automatically converted to different sizes, so depending on the template you have chosen, you may or may not see all of the formats mentioned.

If something doesn’t look correct, you will want to click back and adjust as needed. If it looks good, click “save ad” and you now have impressive new animated display ads running in your content campaign.

Many AdSense websites do not have layouts that accommodate these display ad formats, so you will always want to have text ad versions available in your campaign. I have found that in some of the AdWords accounts that I manage, display ads perform very well with higher CTRs than the text ads. In some of my accounts they simply do not see enough volume. Give the Display Ad Builder a try and see how it works for you. You may want to monitor results using Placement Performance Reports.

Creating Google AdWords Content Network Campaigns requires a unique strategy and keyword list. Contact a qualified PPC Account Manager to discuss your content campaign.

Today, Google released AdWords Editor 6.5 for Windows and Mac.

Here at JumpFly, we were excited to discover the new Keyword Opportunities tool, enabling Keyword Expansion and Keyword Multiplier functionality at the AdWords Editor.

When you open AdWords Editor 6.5 for the first time, you will notice a new button on the Keyword tab appropriately labeled “Keyword Opportunities”. Clicking this new button SHOULD open the Keyword Opportunities (Beta) window, however if you try to use this feature in an account that you previously opened with an MCC login then the feature will not work.

We found that if you open an account in AdWords Editor 6.5 that was previously imported into your Open Account window using your MCC login information, the Keyword Opportunities feature will fail to work and result with an “Authentication Failed” error window. Even after I tried the “Switch User” feature and used the original account login, the feature would still not work.

The solution to this minor bug, remember this is a Beta feature, is to first remove the account and then click “Add Account” entering the original account login information. Once the account is imported fresh using the original account logins, the new Keyword Opportunities button will work. Several of our AdWords Editor updates also failed to work after the update was installed. Completely removing the older version, rebooting, and re-installing the new version solved the problems.

We have notified our Google contacts regarding this bug that seems to only affect people like us who use a My Client Center (MCC) to manage multiple Google AdWords accounts. Everyone else should have no problems using this new Beta feature.

Now, once the Keyword Opportunities window is open, you will notice 2 tabs: “Keyword Expansion” and “Keyword multiplier”

The Keyword expansion tab should look somewhat familiar to anybody that has used Google’s Keyword Tool through the online interface. There is a field at the top where you can enter your search phrase. By clicking the “Get Keywords” button, similar keywords are then displayed in the window below.

Next to each keyword are two fields with indicators for volume and competition. Numbers from 0-5 will show in these fields with 5 indicating the highest amount of competition/volume. The data for estimated CPC and position that can be seen in the online keyword tool are not available in AdWords Editor’s Keyword Expansion window. The best part is that chosen keywords can easily be dragged into any AdGroup over on the right hand side of the window. If you don’t have a campaign or AdGroup ready, you can easily create one with blue hyperlinks located at the bottom of the window.

The Keyword multiplier tab opens a window that many of us in PPC management have seen before in the dozens of free keyword generation tools available all over the Internet. It has 3 fields across the top for your individual keywords and a button that will combine the 3 fields into their various combinations. While missing the ability to quickly switch the order of the 3 fields, this simple tool does do a good job combining keywords quickly and easily.

I found both tools to be welcome additions to the latest release of AdWords Editor 6.5. The ability to quickly add new keywords to AdGroups without the need to use the online tool is a real time saver. I’m sure our friends at Google will eventually iron out the bug that prevents MCC logins from using these new tools. In the meantime, any account that is active using the original logins will have access to these valuable new keyword opportunity features found in AdWords Editor 6.5.

Download AdWords Editor 6.5 here.