Comments on: What is Truly Automated, Adaptive PPC Bid Management Technology?

By: jameszol

jameszol — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:15:39 +0000

@David Szetela Hey! Thanks for commenting! You’re spot on…ACO is in my next post for sure.

By: David Szetela

David Szetela — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:57:21 +0000

Fascinating perspectives, James – can’t wait for the sequels – and I hope you comment re: AdWords Conversion Optimizer!

By: jameszol

jameszol — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:20:56 +0000

@Stu haha…sorry for all the sequels, I just get to a point where I think the post is almost too long and I stop there. Lol. Sorry you have had a bad experience with a couple tools…but because of our conversations off QualityScores, I’d say those fit into the ‘pseudo-automated’ category. They aren’t really ‘automated’.

By: Stuart Draper

Stuart Draper — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:06:39 +0000

James, I could feel a sequel coming on with the last post, and I can already sense a 3rd one coming on in regards to what tools you recommend, or at least your findings based on the shopping around that you have done. I have not felt like the 2 “automated” tools I have used, have been worth it. Awesome for reporting, but that is it.

By: jameszol

jameszol — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:33:50 +0000

@PPCmaze Interesting tactic…but I thought I would clarify that in the scenario above there were 5 competitors…1 ad group, 1 keyword and 2 text ads. If one had enough room in their account to split things up the way you describe, that would be an interesting study. At the same time, I like to keep multiple ads in a group vs multiple keywords. I will occasionally break out a keyword into it’s own ad group w/ multiple ads but have never run a single ad with multiple keywords in the group. There are several ways to test though!

@SEM Dude You’re absolutely right regarding how difficult it is to trust an automated bidding platform entirely…it’s a big obstacle that truly automated companies face when selling their services. We’re accustomed to all of the control given us from the beginning of the ppc space w/ GoTo all the way to now with all of the tools/software available that tout the crazy amount of control one has with their product. It requires a leap of faith in a way…but from what I have seen, and the results I have heard about first hand from those that make the leap…the scalability, the results, the profits and revenue from making that leap far outweigh the costs and their fears totally disappear. What’s interesting is that it’s not only a leap of faith to trust real automated bidding…or smart automated bidding…but the role of the in-house person or agency team changes dramatically with technology like this at their disposal. Roles change from tactical manipulations to more creative strategic roles and that can be a tough transition to make too.

By: SEM Dude

SEM Dude — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:12:14 +0000

Good perspective on the definition of automation. I think you’re spot on with the expectations vs. reality misnomer from the chairs of marketing directors. It’s still difficult to trust a bidding platform entirely and leave it to bid without human involvement; The human touch will always be needed.

While I agree you may save time when not making bid changes, in my 10 years experience at my agency, bid changes never took more than 1-2 hours at a time. With proper team size, we really never lost time to other areas of the accounts.

By: PPCmaze

PPCmaze — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:18:07 +0000

A better way to do the test you described above, 2 ad texts, 1 ad group, 5 keywords is to split this into multiple ad groups, e.g. 1 ad text, 2 ad groups with 1 ad text each, same 5 keywords in each ad group.

Advantage of this split is that you bid on each keyword on a keyword/ad copy combination. So if one keyword resonates with one ad copy particularly well on a CPA basis, then that keyword/ad copy combination gets bid up. What happens over time is that your better ad copy gets bid up as the ad copy drives lower CPA.