Ad Scheduling 101

Problem: You're likely promoting ads at times of the day that have high costs, and low conversion rates.

How does this happen? Most people assume Google will optimize for them, they will to some degree but not completely because they are incentivized to spend more of your money.

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Simple Solution: Eliminate, reduce, and limit ad scheduling.

(Implementation time: 15 minutes per campaign)

• Eliminate all ad scheduling for low-performing hours (including weekends)
• Reduce START-of-day and END-of-day conversion campaign scheduling
• Limit END-of-day awareness campaign scheduling

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Remember, when you view the ad schedule, the times are based on the time zone on your ads account, and not where the campaign is running.

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Advanced Solution: Segment campaigns by geography. Then eliminate, reduce, and limit.

(Implementation time: 2 to 4 hours per campaign)

• If you're grouping more than 1 country into a campaign, segment these into different campaigns.
• If you run ads in the USA, Canada, or other large geographic countries that span 3 or more time zones, segment these into EAST and WEST campaigns and reoptimize the ad scheduling.

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How to implement this

We've never seen a performance go down but, don't overdo it. To implement this, you should:

• Reduce the ad schedule hours once a week (let's say Monday).
• Each week, only reduce ad schedules by 3 per day during the week and 6 hours per day on weekends.
• At the end of the week, let's say Friday, compare the last 4 weeks versus the past week.

Best Case: It takes 15 minutes over 2 weeks to make changes and check the results.

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Explanation

This works because you're reaching people at the right time. Have you ever tried a new business tool at 8 pm on Saturday, probably not and neither do your customers.

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The risk of eliminating scheduled hours is you reduce potential user awareness while the campaign is off. This is okay because you are choosing better performance during peak hours, and reduced performance in OFF hours.

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This is equivalent to opening your restaurant for the dinner rush and remaining closed at 2:45 pm.

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You can repeat this method in 2 other areas: Demographics and Networks.

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Should take you less than 30 minutes per campaign to implement all three!