Another One Bites The Dust
2019 has been a year of change for search marketers – if the death of keyword match types wasn’t enough, Google has announced yet another change for us to chew on. On October 7, Google will remove the “accelerated” ad delivery setting.
Before we dive into the looming ad delivery change, it’s important to address why Google has been making all of these changes to paid search. The most obvious reason is money. It’s good to keep in mind that Google has a vested interest in increasing costs – because the better advertisers get at manipulating paid search results and restricting what they’re willing to pay for, the less likely Google is making money on reckless optimizations.
So wait, if accelerated ad delivery spends your daily budget faster and is notorious for driving inefficient (expensive) costs per click and costs per acquisition, then why is Google removing this perceived “money maker”?
Well, like the rest of us, Google recognizes that inefficient media channels or platforms are the first to go when budgets are being decided. Why would an organization continue to pump money into a money pit that lacks tangible results? Ah ha. There’s our answer. It’s clear that Google believes it’s better equipped than search engine marketers to optimize campaigns to achieve maximum results. More results = more paid search budget. More paid search budget = more money for Google and more opportunity for paid search marketers!
Quick Refresher On Ad Delivery Settings
Here are Google’s definitions of ad delivery and the two delivery options:
Ad delivery: A setting that determines how quickly you want Google to use your budget each day, which can either be spread throughout the day (standard) or used more quickly (accelerated). The setting affects when during the day your ads are likely to show.
Standard delivery (the default option) tries to show your ads throughout the entire day to make sure you don’t spend your whole budget in the morning and cause your ads to stop showing for the rest of the day.
Accelerated delivery tries to show your ads more quickly until your budget is reached. With this option, your ads can stop showing early in the day if your budget is spent.
Accelerated ad delivery is commonly used in ecommerce and B2B/lead generation accounts with high lead goals at a particular cost-per-lead level. Accelerated delivery allows you to drive as many clicks and conversions as possible within a target cost per conversion.
What Marketers Need To Know
- This change to ad delivery will impact both search and shopping campaigns
- Accelerated ad delivery will still be available for display and video campaigns
- As of now, Microsoft Advertising is still offering accelerated ad delivery – however, history proves that major Google changes often result in similar Microsoft changes
- After October 7, all campaigns will be switched to standard ad delivery
- Marketers will likely need to more heavily leverage the ad scheduling feature to manage when ads are eligible to run and bid levels during those times of day/week
- Google says the standard ad delivery setting has been improved to be “more predictive” – essentially, Google is (not so subtly) telling marketers that they can better optimize ad delivery than we can
The biggest takeaway here: do not wait until October 7 to switch your campaigns back to standard ad delivery. Waiting until it is forced upon you could result in less-than-desirable campaign results. You can prepare for this change now by weaning off of accelerated ad delivery and using “maximize conversions” or “maximize clicks” bid strategies and/or ad scheduling.
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