Google Adwords Enhanced Campaigns

You will remember not long ago I drew your attention to Google’s announcement about Enhanced Adwords Campaigns. For those of you who missed it, Adwords Enhanced campaigns is Google’s solution to making it easier for individuals and agencies who run campaigns on multiple devices. That’s the theory anyway. Prior to this development, advertisers had to use multiple campaigns if they wanted to target more than 1 device.
Reactions to Enhanced campaigns have not been universally positive. Certainly it’s added a layer of complexity that didn’t exist before. After all, this is the biggest change to Adwords in a decade or more.  My view is that the potential to advertise on different devices and to gear campaigns to different devices was under-exploited by small businesses. This is because many don’t realise the full potential of Adwords and typically lose money on campaigns.
Which brings me nicely to the fact Device, Location and Time of Day are now regarded as bid modifiers.  In the overall context of Enhanced Campaigns it is these parameters which allow you to adjust a bid for a keyword. For example, you may want to increase a bid early evening but reduce it after 11pm. You may wish to pay a premium for smart phone ads and so on.
My concern about these latest developments is novice advertisers could end up spending far more than intend whether they make use of the new bid modifiers or not.
So what about those loses I mentioned earlier? Well let’s suppose you bid £2 on a keyword.  If all three modifiers are set at 100% that means your click could cost £16! Ouch.  The calculation goes like this:
Original bid:  £2
1 location modifier of 100 percent (2x 2) : £4
1 time of day modifier of 100 percent (2x 4)t: £8
1 device modifier of 100 percent (2×8): £16
Now, being able to refine targeting within an Adwords campaign is, in principle, a good thing. If your solution to save money is to side-step the bid-modifiers think again; your competitors won’t and you could see the number of clicks you get reduce dramatically.
My view is that the bid modifiers are very useful in many markets. But they need to be used with caution and some understanding of how they relate to your market. However if you’re already spending too much or don’t know where to start, it makes sense to get some professional input.  I offer keyword research and campaign creation services as well as on-going management or training so you can manage your Adwords account yourself.  Why bother? Accounts running at a loss are likely to see losses accelerate. There are substantial savings to be made for the canny advertiser.