AdWords Campaign Experiments Tool (ACE) Made Easy
The AdWords Campaign Experiments Tool (ACE) is not a particularly new feature by any means. It has been in operation for a while now and available to all PPC Managers who work within AdWords PPC Management.
Even though the tool is not particularly new, however, there are still a good number of PPC Managers who are not taking advantage of its features. Considering the effective nature of the AdWords tool, Webrageous Studios finds this very strange and believes that one of the main reasons some PPC Managers are still not utilizing the ACE Tool is because of a lack of knowledge as to how to implement the feature into a working campaign.
Therefore, the following information and advice is designed to put into plain and simple terms the way in which the AdWords Campaign Experiments Tool can be implemented. Upon reading further, you might be amazed to see how easy and risk-free it actually is.
What will the AdWords Campaign Experiments Tool allow me to do?
When the AdWords Campaign Experiments Tool is in operation, the PPC Manager is able to run two versions of the same campaign at the same time.
The idea is that you make a change to an existing PPC Campaign (for example, you change the level of a bid) and then you watch the old campaign as it runs alongside the new campaign in order to see which campaign achieves the best results.
Then, if you find that the change you made was a positive change, you can decide to put that new campaign into action completely and phase out the older version of your campaign with ease and peace of mind.
The AdWords Campaign Experiments Tool is a fantastic PPC Management feature because it makes PPC Management as risk-free as it could possibly ever get.
How to Set-Up an AdWords Campaign Experiment
One of the best things about the tool is that it is so easy to implement. Under the “Advanced Settings” tab, you will find the “Experiment Beta” label very easily.
From this point onwards you will be led through a series of very straightforward options whereby you can choose whether to experiment with changes to bids, keywords or ad groups and you can decide how much of the campaign you want to be controlled and how much of it you want to experiment with. A 50% – 50% split is a good place to start for your first AdWords Campaign Experiment with the ACE tool.
Monitoring the Effects of your Changes
The monitoring of the effects of your changes is perhaps that most addictive part of working with the AdWords Campaign Experiments Tool for a PPC Manager. It is genuinely quite exciting to see how results can change and differ between the old and the new campaign on a daily, hourly, or (if you are really addicted!) minute by minute basis.
Once you are confident and happy with the results of your campaign experiment, you can begin rolling out those changes across 100% of the campaign. It is that simple and that risk-free! Why isn’t everybody making use of this AdWords PPC Management tool?
What am I able to Test?
Once you have become familiar and confident with the use of the ACE Tool, why not start experimenting a little further and being more dynamic and daring with your style of PPC experiments?
For instance, you could begin to test the following:
- The quantity and quality of internet users who convert through different match types
- New keyword ideas developed from the opportunities tab
- Ad group default bids instead of individual keyword bids
- Text advertisements as opposed to image advertisements
- More advertisement placements on the Content Network
What am I unable to Test?
Like everything in life, the ACE Tool is not perfect, however. It is not far off to be honest, but there are some things that you cannot do and cannot test using the AdWords Campaign Experiments Tool.
The areas in which the AdWords tool is still a little lacking are as follows:
- It is impossible to test different campaign settings
- It is impossible to test standard versus accelerated advertisement delivery
- The impact that ACE testing has on quality score is as of yet still unclear
- The ACE Tool is also not supported by the AdWords Editor either at present
In conclusion
If you are not using the ACE Tool as part of your PPC campaign management strategy, you should be. Start implementing an experiment right now. The risk is minimal and the positive effects abound.
