Module 2.3: Manage your Search Network campaign (PART 2)

Question 1

What are Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA)?

Answer 1

Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) is a feature that lets you customize your search ads campaign for people who have previously visited your site, and tailor your bids and ads to these visitors when they’re searching on Google and search partner sites.

Remarketing lists for Search ads are only available for the following campaign types:

“Search Network only - All features”
“Search Network only - Dynamic Search Ads
The list membership limit for these lists is capped at 540 days.

Question 2

How do Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) work?

Answer 2

When people leave your site without buying anything, for example, remarketing lists for search ads helps you connect with these potential customers when they continue looking for what they need using Google Search.

You can set your bids, create ads, or select keywords keeping in mind that these customers have previously visited your website. Remarketing lists for search ads use remarketing lists for these customizations.

Question 3

What are the two basic strategies for using remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA)?

Answer 3

• You can optimize bids for your existing keywords for visitors on your remarketing lists. For example, you can increase your bid by 25% for those who previously visited your website in the last 30 days. Or, you could show a different ad to site visitors who have placed items in a shopping cart but have not purchased them.
• You can bid on keywords that you don’t normally bid on just for people who have recently visited your site, or have converted on your site in the past. This can help you increase your sales. For example, you could bid on more broad keywords only for people who have previously purchased from your site.

Question 4

How do you set up remarketing lists?

Answer 4

• To start using remarketing lists for search ads, you create a remarketing list and add a snippet of code that you get from AdWords, called a remarketing tag, to your site. You can add the new remarketing tag to every page in your site. The code tells AdWords to add every site visitor to your list. When people visit your homepage, for example, the cookies associated with their browsers are added to the remarketing list.

Once the remarketing tag is added to your site, you can add the remarketing list to your existing campaigns and ad groups, and raise and lower your bids for customers on the remarketing list.

You can also create a custom combination list to target visitors who viewed certain pages on your website.

Keep in mind: A remarketing list for Google search ads needs to have a minimum number of 1,000 cookies before the list can be used to tailor your search ads. This helps protect the privacy of those who make up your list.

Question 5

What are automated rules and how do they work?

Answer 5

Automated rules let you make changes in your account automatically, based on settings and conditions you choose. You can change your ad status, budget, bids, and more.

For example, if you want to boost your keyword bid any time your ad falls off the first page of results, you can set a rule for that.

In addition, you can use automated rules to trigger emails, without taking any other action, when specific conditions occur.

You can have up to 100 active rules on each account for each user that accesses the account.

(EXAMPLES OF TASKS THAT CAN BE DONE USING AUTOMATED RULES)

• Schedule ads for special promotions or events
• Pause low-performing ads or keywords
• Change keyword bids to control your average position
• Raise keyword bids to ensure ads show on first page
• Send yourself an email if a campaign’s budget is nearly exhausted early in the day

Question 6

What are bulk edits and how do they work?

Answer 6

“Bulk editing” means editing more than one thing in your account at a time. Using bulk editing helps you save time by simultaneously updating multiple items in one campaign, or across multiple campaigns.

AdWords offers various tools and features to help you make bulk edits to your account. The editing options available depend on which tool or feature you use.

Question 7

What can you edit using bulk edits?

Answer 7

Generally, you can make bulk edits to your account using:

• The Edit button, located above your campaigns, keywords, ad groups and ads: When on the Campaigns, Keywords, Ad groups, or Ads tab, you can select multiple items by clicking the box next to each item, then clicking Edit. You can then choose to edit attributes – such as your bid, budget or match type – across all of your selected items.
• Bulk uploads: Download a spreadsheet with details on your keywords, ads, ad groups, campaigns, or product groups. You can make offline changes and upload the spreadsheet so that the changes can be applied to your AdWords account.
• AdWords Editor: This free, downloadable application lets you manage your AdWords account offline so you can easily make bulk edits to your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and more, then upload your changes back in to AdWords when you’re ready.
• AdWords API: The AdWords API (application programming interface) lets developers build applications that interact directly with the AdWords server. With these applications, advertisers and third parties can more efficiently and creatively manage large or complex AdWords accounts.

Question 8

What are AdWords scripts?

Answer 8

AdWords scripts let you make automated changes in your AdWords account. Using JavaScript code, you can change bids, pause ad groups, and add keywords with written scripts directly instead of manually within your AdWords account.

Question 9

How do AdWords scripts work?

Answer 9

• AdWords scripts let you automate actions in your AdWords account by entering JavaScript code in your account. You can use scripts to create, edit, or remove items in your account, saving you time and letting you manage your account more easily.
• Scripts that run for longer than 30 minutes – or 60 minutes for certain types of manager account scripts – will time out. If your script times out, not all of your changes may be completed.
• Once you’ve created a script, you can schedule it to run once, daily, weekly or monthly at a certain hour

Question 10

Describe a few ways you can use AdWords scripts.

Answer 10

• Use data from external sources to initiate changes. For example, use external conversion data to make bid changes, or external inventory data to pause/unpause keywords as inventory becomes low. Or, read your campaign data and stats to create highly customized reports, output them to a spreadsheet, and graph it over time.
• Take action across multiple elements of your account. For example, if a keyword has been hogging your spend for the day, you can both pause the keyword and increase budget at the same time.
• Make changes across all items in your account. For example, increase the CPC bids by 30% for all keywords that generated over 1000 impressions last week.
• If you manage multiple accounts through a manager account, you can run one script across multiple child accounts to optimize bids, create multi-account reports, and monitor for potential problems (such as fixing broken links or conflicting negative keywords).

Question 11

What are the creative optimization tools

that can help you create, test, and update ads across accounts?

Answer 11

• Business data: Use this one-stop-shop for your business information within AdWords. You can access this information to update your creatives in real-time.
• Ad customizers: Tell AdWords how to customize your ads with real-time updates.
• Upgraded URLs: An improved URL management process within AdWords that lets you differentiate between your landing page and tracking parameters.

Question 12

What are the scale and efficiency tools

that help you swiftly make large-scale changes to your accounts?

Answer 12

• Edit campaign settings in bulk: Use bulk editing to update settings like location, language, ad rotation, and more. You can use filters to quickly identify all campaigns that target a specific location, for example.
• Edit ad extensions in bulk: Manage ad extensions more easily. You can change your extensions and edit device settings in bulk, create extensions across campaigns or ad groups with just a few clicks, and create and edit your extensions using spreadsheets. About bulk extension editing
• Run powerful, cross-account scripts: Make large-scale, customized changes to your account — including accounts within your MCC — using simple JavaScript code. You can also create customized reports, and pull in data from your Google Spreadsheets. About AdWords scripts
• Make changes with bulk uploads: Download spreadsheets, make changes offline, and then upload the updated spreadsheet back into your account — right where you want to make your changes. With integrated previews and error-checking, you can also make sure your changes are ready when you are. About bulk uploads
• Use AdWords Editor: Use AdWords Editor to quickly download, update, or create campaigns with powerful bulk editing tools, then upload your changes to AdWords. AdWords Editor gives you the control to manage and view multiple accounts at the same time. You can also copy or move items between campaigns, search for items within your account, view your account statistics, and quickly undo or redo changes. Best of all, you can keep working even when you’re offline.

Question 13

What are the automated bidding tools to help you with real-time bidding at scale?

Answer 13

• Target cost-per-acquisition (CPA): Automatically set bids to help you get as many conversions as possible while reaching your average cost-per-acquisition goal.
• Target return on ad spend (ROAS): Automatically set your bids to maximize your conversion value, while trying to reach an average return on ad spend.
• Maximize clicks: Automatically set bids to help you get the most clicks within a target spend amount that you choose.
• Target search page location: Automatically adjust bids to help you get your ads to the top of the page or the first page of search results.
• Target outranking share: Automatically set bids to help you outrank another domain’s ads in search results.

Question 14

What are the powerful reporting and analytics tools that give you a more holistic view of performance and help you make better business decisions?

Answer 14

• Top movers: See which campaigns and ad groups have experienced the biggest changes in clicks, costs, and conversions, and view details about those changes. About the top movers report
• Auction insights: Compare your performance with other advertisers who are participating in the same auctions and see where you’re missing opportunities. This information can help you make better decisions about bids, budgets, and keyword choices. About the auction insights report
• Importing conversions: Sometimes your adwords-sourced leads convert offline. Or you want to report your online conversions 30 days after the sale so you can exclude orders that were returned. You can with
• AdWords Conversion Import. About tracking offline conversions
• Labels: Apply labels to keywords, campaigns, ad groups, and ads to quickly filter and review the data that matters to you. About labels
• Geographic reporting: Use geographic information to better understand how your ads are performing in different locations. See where your customers are physically located, or locations they’re interested in. If you use location extensions, use the distance report to see how your ads performed in varying distances from your business. About measuring geographic performance
• Search Terms report: See what queries are actually triggering your ads, so you can make better decisions on what positive and negative keywords to use. About the Search terms report
• Custom columns: Tailor the columns in your statistics table to segment and display your data in the ways that are most important to you. About custom columns
• Campaign details report: See which features, settings, and attributes each of your campaigns is using so you can identify account issues or new opportunities.
• Report Editor: Use powerful reporting tools to conduct multi-dimensional analysis and create pivot tables, charts, and graphs, directly within your browser. About the Report Editor

Question 15

What is the Keyword Planner and what is it used for?

Answer 15

• Keyword Planner is a free AdWords tool for new or experienced advertisers that’s like a workshop for building new Search Network campaigns or expanding existing ones.
• You can search for keyword and ad group ideas, see how a list of keywords might perform, and even create a new keyword list by multiplying several lists of keywords together.
• Keyword Planner can also help you choose competitive bids and budgets to use with your campaigns.

Question 16

What are the four different research options available within the Keyword Planner?

Answer 16

• Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category:
  This can help you find keywords for a new campaign or expand the keyword list for an existing campaign.
• Get search volume data and trends:
  If you already have a list of keywords, you can enter those keywords manually or upload them as a CSV file to get an idea of how popular those keywords have been.
• Multiply keyword lists to get new keywords:
  Save the time of manually combining keywords by multiplying two or more lists of keywords. Then, get historical statistics or traffic forecasts for the new list of combined keywords.
• Get click and cost performance forecasts:
  If you already have a list of keywords, you can also enter those keywords manually or upload them as a CSV file to get click and cost forecasts. These are forecasts that are specific to your AdWords account and the bid that you’ve selected.

Question 17

What are bid simulators?

Answer 17

AdWords bid simulators help you see how different bids might change your ads’ weekly performance.

Question 18

What are the different types of bid simulator?

Answer 18

• The regular Bid Simulators show you how changes to your max. CPC bid might change the cost or the number of clicks, impressions, conversions, and conversion value your ads would have received for your keyword or ad group. You can find them on the Ad groups and Keywords tabs.
• The Campaign Bid Simulator shows you how changes to your campaign’s bids might affect that campaign’s performance. Find it on the Campaigns tab.
• The Shopping Campaigns Bid Simulator shows you how certain changes to your bid might have impacted your product group’s performance. You can find it on the Product groups tab.
• The Video Campaigns Bid Simulator shows you how changes to your max. CPV might impact your typical weekly video traffic. Find it on the Campaigns tab.
• The Target CPA Simulator shows you how changes to your target cost-per-acquisition (target CPA) might affect your ad performance. Find it on the Campaigns tab or in the Shared library.
• The Mobile Bid Adjustment Simulator shows you how changes to your mobile bid adjustment might affect your ad performance on different devices.

Question 19

How do bid simulators work?

Answer 19

• The bid simulators collect and analyze data from ad auctions on the Search Network and the Display Network while considering information such as Quality Score, keyword traffic, and competition in the ad auction.
• The tools use this information to estimate how your ads might have performed in terms of key metrics like cost, impressions, clicks, and conversion volume.

Question 20

What are some important factors when using the Mobile Bid Adjustment Simulator?

Answer 20

• This bid simulator takes into account your existing campaign settings,
  including your existing max. CPC bids, enhanced cost-per-click bids, location bid adjustments, ad scheduling bid adjustments, and remarketing bid adjustments.
• The bid simulator does not take into account ad group bid adjustments.
  If you apply any bid adjustment changes from the simulator, your ad group bid adjustments will be overwritten.
• Estimates will become more accurate over time as your campaign accumulates data.
  You can still use the simulator for newer campaigns.
• You might need to increase your budget if you’d like to achieve the traffic levels shown in the simulator.
• The bid simulator offers clicks, cost, and impressions estimates. The simulator does not provide information on estimated conversions.

Question 21

What must you keep in mind if you’re using bid simulators for conversion estimates?

Answer 21

• Conversion definitions: Conversions rely not only on ad interactions such as clicks, but also on the actions that customers take on your site. This can also make them more difficult to predict.
• Changes to conversion tracking: Removing or moving the conversion tracking tag could invalidate the estimates. Don’t make any major changes to the conversion tracking code for at least 2 weeks before using the bid simulators for conversion and conversion value estimates.
• Delayed conversions (Search traffic): Simulators count conversions that might have been recorded during the simulation period (usually the last 7 days). For example, if a click took place during the simulation period, but the conversion wasn’t recorded until after the simulation period, then the conversion would not be counted in the simulator. Keep in mind that conversions could still occur up to 90 days after each interaction depending on your chosen conversion window.
• Sparse conversion data: There is usually less conversion data than click or impression data when calculating these estimates, so conversions can be more difficult to estimate. If your account doesn’t typically get a lot of conversions, we may not have enough information to generate an estimate for conversions. The longer the history and the more conversions you have, the more accurate these estimates will be.

Question 22

What are the benefits of using the Campaign Bid Simulator?

Answer 22

• You can view bid changes in aggregate and model changes even when keywords or ad groups might not have enough data for this on their own.
• Bid scaling is available, so you can see what might happen if you increased or decreased all your bids by a specific percentage (10%, for example).
• Because campaign-level bid changes can increase traffic significantly, we’ll tell you whether you need to increase your budget and, if so, what to change it to.
• You can model what happens if you changed all your bids in the campaign to a fixed value. If you choose to apply 1 of these campaign-wide bid changes, your ad group default bids will be changed to this fixed value, and your keyword-level bids will be erased.
• You can download the bid simulation data at the account or campaign level.
• You can download an AdWords Editor-compatible file with the bid amounts to which ad groups and keywords must be set.

Question 23

What might cause a bid simulator to not be available?

Answer 23

A bid simulator may not always be available to help you estimate how changes to your bid or target CPA might affect performance. If a simulator is unavailable, the simulator icon (Bid Simulator icon​) will be greyed out. Here are some common reasons why:

Not enough data
The bid simulators use data from the last 7 days to provide estimates. They might not be able to provide estimates if a campaign, keyword, ad group, or product group was recently added, or didn’t receive many clicks in the last 7 days.

If you’ve just added a new campaign, keyword, ad group, or product group, check back after more time has passed to see if the simulators have provided estimates. If your campaign, keyword, ad group, or product group doesn’t get many impressions, increasing your bids can help give your ads more exposure.

Campaign daily budget
If your campaign has reached or nearly reached its daily budget at least once in the last 7 days, the simulators may not be able to provide estimates.

Campaign bidding option
The simulators don’t work with campaigns that use Maximize Clicks bidding.

Not enough keywords using the ad group default bid
If you’re using the Bid Simulator at the ad group level, the Bid Simulator might not be able to provide estimates if you’re using keyword-level bids. Try switching your keywords to the ad group default bid instead.

Campaign Experiments
The simulators don’t work with campaigns that have experiments running. Once the experiment is finished, you need to make changes to the original campaign, create a new campaign from the experiment, or remove the experiment in order to to use the bid simulator in the original campaign. The experiment status should be either “Applied”, “New Campaign”, or “Removed”. Learn more

Product groups in Shopping campaign using the Item ID attribute
The Bid Simulator isn’t available for product groups that use the Item ID attribute.

Question 24

Why might the bid simulator miss the following columns?

• Clicks and cost
• Top of page impressions
• Campaign bidding option
• Conversions and conversion value
• Additional budget/day required

Answer 24

• Clicks and cost
  The clicks and cost columns will only appear if you met a minimum threshold of clicks within the last week.
• Top of page impressions
  This column only appears if you are estimated to receive at least 1 top of page impression for any of the bids simulated.
• Campaign bidding option
  The simulators don’t work with campaigns that use Maximize Clicks bidding.
• Conversions and conversion value
  The “Conversions” and “Total conv. value” columns only appear if:

You’re using AdWords conversion tracking.
You received a minimum threshold of conversions within the last week.

• Additional budget/day required
  This column may only appear in bid simulators at the campaign level.