Why Don't My Google AdWords Ads Appear?

[DaveT]

Hello Everybody,

Maybe one of you guys can help me out on this (specially AdWordsRep). :)

Lately (this past 3 weeks) I have been getting a lot of reports about people not seeing our ad in Google when they do search with my keywords. Today, Thursday has been the most complaint about not seeing our ad.

Strangely, my budget is way over what the system suggested, and no changes has been made lately in the particular campaign that is not showing up.

I called my representative and all she can explain was the system sometimes has delay time.

Is this something that Google know of and has been working on it?

I appreciate any response you may have. Thank you!

DaveA

[NFFC]

Same here this week.

We did add a new campaign and also increased daily spend on exsisting. Maybe just coincidence but just maybe the daily spend increase triggers something.

Similar in the real world if a client wants to up his credit limit he usually gets extra scrutiny, just a guess.

[DaveT]

Also, it has been reported from multiple state, west coast and east coast.

The strangest thing is, Me and my coworkers was able to see our ads. :confused:

[AdWordsRep]

DaveT, I missed your question till now. Sorry about that.

Most often (and by this I mean about 95% of the time, based on my experience), when your ad shows sometimes and not others, it will be a daily budget issue.

Many advertisers think that if their daily budget has not yet been reached when they check for their ad, then their ad should show - but this is not actually the case. The 'real story' is much more complex than that.

There is a system in place that is constantly monitoring a wide range of factors, in order to come up with a "suggested budget". This suggested daily budget is the amount that the program estimates you would need to budget, in order to safely allow your ad to show every time someone searched on any keyword - without over-delivering on your budget.

How is the suggested daily budget arrived at? To over-simplify for the sake of brevity:

* The program estimates the number of impressions that each and every keyword in the campaign will get, which, of course, varies according to how it is targeted (broad, phrase, or exact).

* It then applies a moderate CTR (of around 2%) to that number of impressions, to arrive at how many clicks you're likely to get.

* Then it looks at your Max CPC for each keyword to decide how much you might spend for each click, which can vary per keyword.

* Taking into account all the above, the system arrives at an estimate of how much you would need to budget in order to have your ad show every time, for every keyword, without exceeding your budget. This is your suggested budget, which can vary from moment-to-moment, depending on the competitive landscape.

If your actual budget is lower than the suggested budget, your ad will not appear every time. How often will it appear? Well, if your actual budget is $1.00, and your suggested budget is $2.00, then your ad will show about half the time. Delivery will be spaced out over the 24 hour day.

Important note: Because this system uses a moderate CTR in it's calculation, it can be thrown off if you have a substantial number of keywords with CTRs that are much higher - say in the neighborhood of 4% and above. So if your ad is not showing all the time, and the Suggested Budget shows as OK, it could still be a daily budget issue. You may want to experiment with raising your daily budget, to see if your ad appears more often.

Also check your actual spending, day-by-day for the past week or so - using the date range tool. If you see that you have met or exceeded your budget often, this is another sure sign that your budget is too low.

Two quick tips for appearing more often for the same budget:

* Reduce the number of keywords in the campaign, by weeding out low performers: untargeted keywords that are too broad, keywords that are giving you low ROI, keywords that aren't really that important to you, and so forth.

* Lower your Max CPC for some or all of your keywords.

Other factors that can influence whether you see your ad or not:

* Are you regionally targeted? Then if you are searching from a location outside your targeted region, you will not see your ad.

* Server delays, as mentioned by the support person that you spoke with.

OK, I'm well on my way to writing a book here! I think I'll stop for now. However, I hope that this provides some insight.

AWR

[DaveT]

Dear ADW,

Thank you for your comprehensive explanation to my question. I really appreciate that. I will defenitely try to solve this by doing what you suggested.

It's all make sense because of the way we set up our b2b model. We market our services by calling up prospective clients throughout the nation and showing them how we come up through Google's sponsored listings to generate business leads. This set up naturally probably makes our CTR higher than what the system predicts. It is a problem for us because when we try to explain our program to them, sometimes they cannot even see our sponsored listing.

I apologize if I over-asking you questions... :)

Does the system measure CTR geographically and make decision wether to show the ad in a particular geographic area based on CTR in that geographic area?

The reason I asked this question is because in some of my campaigns, I set the budget up to a double what the system suggested (to minimize this kind of problem when we call up prospective clients) and we at our office were able to see the ads everytime we punch in the keywords, but the clients who is in another state could not see our ads. Also sometimes, they are able to see our ad in AOL and other partner sites but not in Google.

I hope my question make sense.... :confused:

Thank you,

Dave

[AdWordsRep]

Does the system measure CTR geographically and make decision whether to show the ad in a particular geographic area based on CTR in that geographic area?

The reason I asked this question is because in some of my campaigns, I set the budget up to a double what the system suggested (to minimize this kind of problem when we call up prospective clients) and we at our office were able to see the ads every time we punch in the keywords, but the clients who is in another state could not see our ads. Also sometimes, they are able to see our ad in AOL and other partner sites but not in Google.

If I've understood your question correctly, DaveT, how often your ad appears in a particular region is not tied to it's CTR geographically.

Assuming your campaigns are targeted nationally, and not regionally, then everything you've described still sounds like a daily budget issue. When daily budget isn't sufficient, it's not at all unusual to see your ad one moment and not the next. And this is likely to be what's happening when you look for your ad in one moment and see it, and your client looks in another moment and doesn't.

(On the other hand if the campaign in question is targeted regionally rather than nationally, then that is a whole different situation...)

It sounds as if you might want to consider creating a 'Show and Tell' campaign with a very limited number of keywords and a daily budget that allows the ads to show 24/7 for all of them. Then the ad will always be there when you need to show it to a prospective client. :)

It also might be wise to contact AdWords support and ask them to evaluate why you ads are showing sometimes and not others. They can make a much better evaluation than I can, since they can see your actual account in detail.

AWR

[DaveT]

Dear ADW,

Thank you for your answer to my question. The 'show and tell' campaign is a good idea we may implement.

Your existence in this forum is greatly appreciated.

David.

[AdWordsRep]

Thanks for the kind words, DaveT! I really enjoy being here.

:) AWR

[flyingrose]

I suspect that you are seeing an issue that some advertisers have been having intermittently for many months. The issue particularly seems to affect those advertisers who pause and resume ads or have recently made any kind of changes.

If the problem is daily budget, setting your budget at or above the amount recommended by Google's system should resolve it. Also, if the daily budget is limiting your ad being displayed, repeating the search multiple times should show the ad at times and not at others fairly consistently.

I will propose two other reasons for being unable to see your ads. First there is a replication issue affecting ads that have been paused or changed. I have seen ads consistently display in one area of the country and never display somewhere else for hours or even most a day.

Google Reps have said they are aware of this issue, suggested never pausing ads, and indicated that the issue seems to affect certain advertisers repeatedly.

If you are using broad matched words and phrases instead of phrase and exact match I suspect that the new "Expanded Broad Match" may be another reason ads cease to appear. This is a theory and I do not have any proof thus far.

Test this theory by doing searches for variations for which a broad matched term would normally appear. Based on the description of how Expanded Broad Match works, if an ad is shown a limited (far less than 100) number of times and does not get a click the ad will cease to display.

My suggestion for avoiding that particular issue is to add exact and phrase matched keywords to ensure your ads will be displayed.

What "Expanded Broad Match" would theoretically do is first show far more (and many pontentially poorly targeted) ads and then as they get disabled potentially end up displaying few or possibly no ads for any given broad match phrase.

Google probably believes that eventually this will result in improved relevance. How that will happen is not readily apparent to me as they are first displaying too many irrelevant ads to the detriment of highly targeted ads which will result in CTRs dropping and then possibly having no ads running at all.

I have not yet determined whether those ads that didn't meet the CTR criterion at first are permanently or temporarily disabled.