I can’t see my ads! Help!
Filed Under (AdWords, Pay Per Click Campaign Management, the PPC Book) by Jeff Hudson on 12-09-2006
Yes, if you currently manage PPC campaigns for any number of clients this question is no doubt the bane of your existence on a daily basis. Normally, the conversation goes like this:
“Jeff I can’t see my ads, what in the world is going on here?”
“Dear Client, your daily budget is 45 cents and your main keyword is ‘New York Injury Attorneys’, we may never see your ad, ever. Ever.”
OK, that’s not exactly how it goes, but you get the idea. Google has given us a nice tool in order to help advertisers see their ads with certain geographical restrictions in a ‘preview‘ environment. What is nice about this is that the ads will not accrue impressions or clicks, and the advertiser finally gets to see something tangible (while not live, yes, but it will still help people get over their skittishness.)
To me this has been one of the major challenges in PPC client management. Many of the advertisers who have adopted pay per click marketing were yellow page clients. They understand the importance of this medium, but they can’t get over the fact that they can’t see their ads all the time. No matter how many times you describe the adwords system, they still hang up the phone feeling like someone is taking their money in some sort of scam. Think about it.
Pay for Yellow Page ad, see thousands of copies of your ad everywhere.
Pay for newspaper classified ad, see thousands of copies of your ad everywhere.
Billboard, everywhere.
Magazine, everywhere. On and on and on.
The irony is, all of those offline ‘impressions’ are by and large completely, utterly, untargeted. However, you can touch and feel them, which goes a very very long way.
Anyhow, the point of my post, if you want to show someone exactly what their ad looks like, Google can do it for you.
From the Adwords blog:
“We’ve heard your feedback and now have a tool for you to use to preview your ads no matter where they’re targeted. Here’s how it works:
- Visit www.google.com/adpreview
- Enter your keyword(s) in the search box and click on the “Search” button
- Preview your ads on the search results page that loads or the subsequent pages (click the next link to see more ads on the right-hand side)
For example, if you are trying to preview ads for “pay per click genius” in Chicago, IL, the URL you would use would look like:
http://www.google.com/search?adtest=on&hl=en&q=pay+per+click+genius&gr=US-IL&gcs=Chicago
A useful tool from the folks at the Adwords farm.
If you manage PPC campaign for clients, what’s the best explanation you’ve heard, or given, to a client when asked about the inability to see their ads all the time?
