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Wrestling with the new Google Ads interface

Marketing, social media, advertising

Andy Black

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Firstly, Google rebranded AdWords to Google Ads. I'm cool with that.

Secondly, they changed the interface and finally forced us to use it. I'm not cool with that.

Anyway, in this thread we can document our struggles trying to do the simple things we used to do in the old interface, and help each other before we all lose our hair.


...


First up... I've a new client and have created some starting campaigns for them.

We're the Fastlane forum so let's imagine they're selling car tyres (they're not, but let's use that).

(Note that I'm clueless about car tyres. This isn't about a thread about car tyres so if I talk cr@p about tyres just ignore it and stay on track.)

Let's say the company are called Armstrong Tyres (a nice name I've just plucked out of the air).

Armstrong have been going a while and they have their own line of products that people know the names of for various categories (think "Hoover" for vacuum cleaners).

Btw... note how a nice brand name can contain what they do (Tyres) but people will eventually drop that and call them by the shortened version.


For the first month I've deliberately not loaded up campaigns to target their brand name. Normally I do, but Armstrong are so well known I'd use up too much of the first month's test budget to show them they have good brand recognition - which they already know.

Instead I've setup two types of campaigns, one targets the broad category name, and the other targets the name of the Armstrong offering in this category.

Examples:

Category: Cheap tyres
Armstrong's product name: Baseline Tyres

Category: 4x4 Tyres
Armstrong's product name: Knobbler Tyres

Category: Tyres for performance cars
Armstrong's product: Grippo Tyres


We've created 6 campaigns in total for them:
  1. IP=UK {Generic: Cheap Tyres} (google; modbroad)
  2. IP=UK {Generic: 4x4 Tyres} (google; modbroad)
  3. IP=UK {Generic: Performance Tyres} (google; modbroad)

  4. IP=UK {ProductName: Baseline Tyres} (google; modbroad)
  5. IP=UK {ProductName: Knobbler Tyres} (google; modbroad)
  6. IP=UK {ProductName: Grippo Tyres} (google; modbroad)

They've approved, say, £600 as the budget for the first month while we gather data and figure out if Google Ads is a good channel for them.

So we've created two shared budgets and assigned them to the appropriate campaigns:
  1. Generic Shared Budget ... £20/day
  2. ProductName Shared Budget ... £20/day


Great, nothing unusual there.


Two weeks in and the client has seen a lift in sales. Marvellous.

Now the client wants to push the Knobbler Tyres in the run up to Father's Day. They're offering a Father's Day discount so we've created new ads mentioning it, and we're designing a new landing page for them (since their site sucks too).

We've told them we're hitting the daily budget early in the day so can either spend more and go over the initial agreed £600 budget, OR we can drop bids even more and try and get more clicks for the same spend.

They prefer to maintain the high-ish ad position and show as often as they can, so have approved a bigger budget.



Which brings me to what I've spent the last 20 minutes trying to figure out in the Google Ads interface:

How the feck do I take a campaign out of a shared budget and give it an individual budget?

I'm going to go to the AdWords Editor and see if i can do it that way.

If you've figured out how to do it in the new interface then please let us know here!




EDIT: Argh.... AdWords Editor didn't work. When a campaign is using a shared budget we can't edit the budget at all.

The workaround I've done is create a new shared budget for "Knobbler Tyres" and applied it to the branded and non-branded 4x4 tyre campaigns.
 
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Last edited:

PizzaOnTheRoof

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Firstly, Google rebranded AdWords to Google Ads. I'm cool with that.

Secondly, they changed the interface and finally forced us to use it. I'm not cool with that.

Anyway, in this thread we can document our struggles trying to do the simple things we used to do in the old interface, and help each other before we all lose our hair.


...


First up... I've a new client and have created some starting campaigns for them.

We're the Fastlane forum so let's imagine they're selling car tyres (they're not, but let's use that).

(Note that I'm clueless about car tyres. This isn't about a thread about car tyres so if I talk cr@p about tyres just ignore it and stay on track.)

Let's say the company are called Armstrong Tyres (a nice name I've just plucked out of the air).

Armstrong have been going a while and they have their own line of products that people know the names of for various categories (think "Hoover" for vacuum cleaners).

Btw... note how a nice brand name can contain what they do (Tyres) but people will eventually drop that and call them by the shortened version?


For the first month I've deliberately not loaded up campaigns to target their brand name. Normally I do, but Armstrong are so well known I'd use up too much of the first month's test budget to show them they have good brand recognition - which they already know.

Instead I've setup two types of campaigns, one targets the broad category name, and the other targets the name of the Armstrong's offering in this category.

Examples:

Category: Cheap tyres
The name of Armstrong's offering in this category: Baseline Tyres

Category: 4x4 Tyres
The name of Armstrong's offering in this category: Knobbler Tyres

Category: Tyres for performance cars
The name of Armstrong's offering in this category: Grippo Tyres


We've created 6 campaigns in total for them:
  1. IP=UK {Generic: Cheap Tyres} (google; modbroad)
  2. IP=UK {Generic: 4x4 Tyres} (google; modbroad)
  3. IP=UK {Generic: Performance Tyres} (google; modbroad)

  4. IP=UK {ProductName: Baseline Tyres} (google; modbroad)
  5. IP=UK {ProductName: Knobbler Tyres} (google; modbroad)
  6. IP=UK {ProductName: Grippo Tyres} (google; modbroad)

They've approved, say, £600 as the budget for the first month while we gather data and figure out if Google Ads is a good channel for them.

So we've created two shared budgets and assigned them to the appropriate campaigns:
  1. Generic Shared Budget ... £20/day
  2. ProductName Shared Budget ... £20/day


Great, nothing unusual there.


Two weeks in and the client has seen a lift in sales. Marvellous.

Now the client wants to push the Knobbler Tyres in the run up to Father's Day. They're offering a Father's Day discount so we've created new ads mentioning it, and we're designing a new landing page for them (since their site sucks too).

We've told them we're hitting the daily budget early in the day so can either spend more and go over the initial agreed £600 budget, OR we can drop bids even more and try and get more clicks for the same spend.

They prefer to maintain the high-ish ad position and show as often as they can, so have approved a bigger budget.



Which brings me to what I've spent the last 20 minutes trying to figure out in the Google Ads interface:

How the feck do I take a campaign out of a shared budget and give it an individual budget?

I'm going to go to the AdWords Editor and see if i can do it that way.

If you've figured out how to do it in the new interface then please let us know here!




EDIT: Argh.... AdWords Editor didn't work. When a campaign is using a shared budget we can't edit the budget at all.

The workaround I've done is create a new shared budget for "Knobbler Tyres" and applied it to the branded and non-branded 4x4 tyre campaigns.
Fiddled around in the individual campaign settings and in the budget section I found this:

budget
Mjb2vqn


The shared budget is called "test"

I just clicked the X and was able to change the budget.

Edit: Insert image is broken I think so I added a link
 

PizzaOnTheRoof

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Read Fastlane!
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ddzc

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Hey @Andy Black ,

Hope all is well! I've been playing around with the new interface for the past couple of weeks and I really like it, seems well organized and easy to maneuver around with modifying and changing things on the fly.

I noticed something new (might be a bit old by now - haven't used adwords in quite some time), and this is regarding the Affinity Audiences). I'm wondering what your input is on it and if you've had success targeting via Affinity as opposed to keyword search terms. In my niche, keywords are bidding at ridiculous numbers - $1.50-$2/click. I decided to give Affinity Audiences a try, a few audiences fit quite nicely in to my niche. As I spent a few hundred dollars and checked the results, I was fascinated, for Display Ads, I'm getting 0.10-0.15 clicks, pretty good CTR (higher than my fb ads), and for in-stream video ads, I'm getting landing page views at 0.10-0.20 CPC.

All this for 0% conversion rates. I have a similar flow which converts on Facebook, it appears the funnel and flow is working. My question is, are these "Affinity Audiences" - junk traffic. Wondering how your experience has been (if you've ever used them).

In addition, I find it rather interesting where my Google Ads campaigns show 400 clicks for the day but when I head over to my website and view the statistics, I have 50 visits. Losing hope and trust with Google Ads at this point.

Cheers,
Dan
 

Andy Black

Help people. Get paid. Help more people.
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
370%
May 20, 2014
18,566
68,699
Ireland
Hey @Andy Black ,

Hope all is well! I've been playing around with the new interface for the past couple of weeks and I really like it, seems well organized and easy to maneuver around with modifying and changing things on the fly.

I noticed something new (might be a bit old by now - haven't used adwords in quite some time), and this is regarding the Affinity Audiences). I'm wondering what your input is on it and if you've had success targeting via Affinity as opposed to keyword search terms. In my niche, keywords are bidding at ridiculous numbers - $1.50-$2/click. I decided to give Affinity Audiences a try, a few audiences fit quite nicely in to my niche. As I spent a few hundred dollars and checked the results, I was fascinated, for Display Ads, I'm getting 0.10-0.15 clicks, pretty good CTR (higher than my fb ads), and for in-stream video ads, I'm getting landing page views at 0.10-0.20 CPC.

All this for 0% conversion rates. I have a similar flow which converts on Facebook, it appears the funnel and flow is working. My question is, are these "Affinity Audiences" - junk traffic. Wondering how your experience has been (if you've ever used them).

In addition, I find it rather interesting where my Google Ads campaigns show 400 clicks for the day but when I head over to my website and view the statistics, I have 50 visits. Losing hope and trust with Google Ads at this point.

Cheers,
Dan
Hi Dan,

I’ve not used affinity audiences (yet?). I just focus on paid search at the moment. I’d like to get into YouTube advertising as that can be keyword driven too.
 
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Andy Black

Help people. Get paid. Help more people.
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
370%
May 20, 2014
18,566
68,699
Ireland
Fiddled around in the individual campaign settings and in the budget section I found this:

I just clicked the X and was able to change the budget.
Dammit. I couldn't find it for want of looking.

Simple really. Oh well, I hope someone got some value from the opening post.

upload_2018-8-18_23-42-19.png
 

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