AdWords Campaign Experiments: Test-Based PPC | The Digtal Clicks Blog
Google AdWords Experiments (or ‘ACE’, released last year) allows online marketers to test certain aspects of their PPC campaigns without fully committing to changes. The service allows one element of the campaign to be tested for a user-set period and can be stopped whenever the marketer decides it is necessary. Areas can be tweaked from the ‘ad group’ level and down, allowing the testing of new ad groups, ad text, destinations (for testing landing pages), placements (for display network placements managed by the user), keyword bids, additional keywords, and keyword match types. The major advantage of the service is that it allows those in online marketing to test the elements of their campaign that they may feel are lacking with a limited risk of loss. As the tests are undertaken in real time, significant variances in results can be attributed to different factors, like market changes, trends, and seasonality. Google also monitors the experimental changes made to the campaign and conveys the significance of the tweaks relative to the weight given to the experimental split, letting the marketer decide if the results are worth sticking with the changes made. To get the best out of 'ACE', marketers should have a clear idea of what they want to test or achieve so that they can maintain an idea of the extent to which the experimental changes are meeting their expectations. There is potential to lose money if the alternative (rather than additional) experimental split is given more weight, as the marketer would be temporarily neglecting aspects of a PPC campaign that would be performing well in favour of new tactics. Although the idea behind ACE is that given the appropriate judgement of the marketer, it is likely that losses will be comparatively less than if they had enacted an ‘apply to all’ based strategy and had waited to see the results. For this reason, ACE has a greater potential for Internet marketing experimentation.