AdWords Campaign Experiments are ACE
Here at Search Star we love coming in on a Monday morning to find that the small campaign changes we made late on Friday afternoon have improved a click through rate or lowered a cost per click. The only problem we have is that the only way we can judge whether our PPC performance is actually improving is by comparing day by day, week by week or month by month performance figures.
This is inadequate for two reasons; firstly because in the ever changing environment that is PPC advertising there is no reliable way to compare figures from one day to the next. But secondly, and more importantly, it means that we can’t test whether the changes we make are having a genuinely positive effect or not; how do we know that the previous campaign settings wouldn’t have performed in exactly the same way?
Fortunately, our friends over at Google have come up with neat new tool to allows advertisers to test and measure changes to their AdWords campaigns in real time by executing experimental campaigns alongside their existing live campaigns. AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) performs simultaneous split tests to measure the effect of everything from keyword bid changes, match types or new placements on a small percentage of PPC traffic – allowing advertisers to make reliable before and after comparisons of campaign performance.
Now rolling out globally after a successful US Beta, Google ACE is surely the future of evaluating ROI from PPC activity. The more information given about the effects of even minor variations to AdWords campaigns can only help advertisers improve their performance, and that can only make our Monday mornings that bit more enjoyable.
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