by John A. Lee, Search Marketing Manager

Successful PPC management is all about proper targeting. The potential audience for a PPC ad is huge, but you want want to zero in on the right people who are ready to take action at the the moment they see your ad. One method for targeting users when they are most likely to take action is called Ad Scheduling.

The tactic is known as Ad Scheduling or Day Parting and it is available in Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter. As with all PPC tactics, Ad Scheduling should be approached with caution and a full understanding of how it works. If you know that customers convert higher (or don’t convert) at certain times of the day, you can either pause your campaigns or lower keyword bids during that time. This can save you money by not wasting budget when customers aren’t buying. At the other end of the spectrum, you can automatically increase bids when users are most likely to click and convert.

The single biggest mistake advertisers make is relying on their intuition to set up Ad Scheduling for PPC. Using real data is the only way to accurately schedule your ads around customer behavior. Google AdWords reporting doesn’t provide time-of-day conversion reporting. Though I should mention that Microsoft adCenter DOES! Advertisers also fail to recognize the many other potential downsides to Ad Scheduling. Advertisers often confuse or disregard time zones. Worse yet, many advertisers set Ad Scheduling and never revisit the data to make adjustments. Beyond generalities, each of the big three search engines handles Ad Scheduling in a different way and must be discussed and managed independently.

Google AdWords

In AdWords, to edit Ad Scheduling, go to your campaign settings and find the section labeled “Advanced Settings” and click the “Edit” link:

Once you click “Edit” you will be presented with a dialogue box showing the seven days of the week – each broken down into six, four hour segments. This dialogue box will allow you to simply pause your campaigns or to modify bids based on the time.

Here are the 6 things you need to know about Ad Scheduling in AdWords:

1. Very Important! All actions performed as a result of your Ad Scheduling settings will be based on your account’s time zone settings. If your account is set for the Eastern time zone and you target customers in California under the Pacific time zone that means there will be a 3 hour disparity in targeting. For example: if you choose to pause your campaigns from 8 pm to 8 am Eastern, that translates to 5 pm to 5 am Pacific. If Ad Scheduling is an absolute must for your PPC efforts, you will have to create unique campaigns for each time zone to be 100% accurate.
2. Ad Scheduling is set at the campaign level. All ad groups under that campaign will be governed by those rules. Plan your account structure accordingly.
3. Campaigns can be paused or have their bids raised/lowered in 15 minute blocks of time.
4. Bid changes are set as a percentage with Ad Scheduling. You tell Google that you are willing to pay X% more or Y% less for a click in the specified time range.
5. Ad Scheduling settings can be copied and pasted to other campaigns using AdWords Editor.
6. AdWords does not provide time-of-day reporting on conversions. You will need to utilize another data source to make decisions on Ad Scheduling. One potential option is Google Analytics.

Using Google Analytics to Create Time-of-Day Conversion Reports

Because Google (and Yahoo!) don’t provide hourly conversion reports, it is very important to access that data somewhere else. In this case, that somewhere else is Google Analytics. Once logged into Analytics, choose “Goals” from the left-hand navigation and then select “Total Conversions.” If you go with this report as-is, you will view all conversions regardless of the traffic source. So we need to focus on PPC. In the upper right-hand corner of your Analytics screen, look for the “Advanced Segments” button and click. Under “Default Segments” look for “Paid Search Traffic.”

Now that you are looking at PPC, you can move on to getting to the hourly conversion data. Select your date range and then look for the line that says “Graph by:”. Here you will find a clock. Click the clock icon and your “Total Conversions” report – segmented by “Paid Search Traffic” – will be laid out for you by time-of-day. This will be an accumulative total per-hour based on your time range.

Yahoo! Search Marketing

To be honest, Yahoo!’s Ad Scheduling functionality doesn’t differ greatly from the Google AdWords model. That being said – it differs in areas that are VERY handy for advertisers. Yahoo! also loosely refers to location, demographic and Ad Scheduling settings as “Targeting.” To access these settings in Yahoo!, click on the Campaigns tab and look for three small icons next to each campaign – a head, a globe and a clock. Of course, you’re looking for the clock:

Clicking the clock icon will instantly display that campaign’s Ad Scheduling settings. To modify, simply click “Edit.”

Remember the sticky situation with Google AdWords and time zones? Yahoo! has eliminated this concern by allowing advertisers to choose to A) target their time zone or B) target the audience’s time zone:

Here are 4 things you need to know about Yahoo!’s Ad Scheduling settings:

1. Yahoo! lets you choose whether Ad Scheduling is based on your time zone OR the time zone of the targeted audience.
2. In another crowd pleasing gesture, Yahoo! allows you to decide whether to manage Ad Scheduling at the campaign OR the ad group level. By default, it will be at the campaign level.
3. And to yet again set themselves apart from Google, Yahoo! allows you to modify bids by percentage OR price.
4. Yahoo! does not provide a time-of-day report for conversions. Use the instructions listed above for Google Analytics.

Microsoft adCenter

The Ad Scheduling capabilities of adCenter are effective, but decidedly less robust and more restrictive than those offered by either Google or Yahoo!. To access Ad Scheduling settings in adCenter from either a campaign or ad group, click on the “Change Settings” link. Under settings, find the box labeled “Additional Settings.” From here, find where it says “Target by time of day” and click “Edit”:

Microsoft adCenter will only let you pause or modify bids for your campaigns within preset blocks of time:

Here are 5 things you need to know about Ad Scheduling in Microsoft adCenter:

1. Microsoft will not let you choose a custom time range. You must choose from their preset blocks of time.
2. Ad Scheduling can be set at either the campaign OR ad group level.
3. Bid changes are set as a percentage only.
4. In adCenter, your Ad Scheduling settings are automatically applied to the audience’s time zone. You don’t get to choose. If you literally want your campaigns to shut off at a certain time for your time zone, but you target the entire US, than you will get really confused, really fast. In this scenario, you would likely have to geo-target different time zones in different campaigns or ad groups BEFORE setting up Day Parting.
5. Microsoft adCenter DOES provide a time-of-day report for conversions. Choose “Hour” as an attribute when building a custom report.

So there you have it. Ad Scheduling in Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter isn’t overly complicated, but there are enough differences and pitfalls that it is easy to make mistakes. One important note I would leave you with today is that if you are in the habit of creating campaigns in Google AdWords and then copying them over to Yahoo! or Microsoft – take the extra time to modify your Ad Scheduling settings to account for each search engines’ differences.

Have a question about Ad Scheduling or know any good tips? Leave me a comment!

We’re trying something a little different on today’s PPC Rockstars on Webmasterradio.fm. Tune in at 4 PM EDT and ask me any question – preferably about PPC and AdWords advertising. I’ll attempt to answer, and if I get stumped, I’ll ask one of my PPC expert buddies to help me out – a virtual lifeline.

Participate on Twitter by sending me a message – I’m @szetela – and/or following the hash tag #ppcrockstars.

We all know that tracking conversions is crucial to optimizing PPC campaigns. But almost all conversion tracking mechanisms – including the ones used by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and most site analytics packages – are flawed in an important way.

Frequently a conversion happens after the customer has visited the site more than once. This is especially true for sites that sell high-priced consumer goods, or complex technical solutions. The first visit may have been elicited by a PPC ad, resulting from a broad search query like “digital cameras,” or a banner ad on a content network. Subsequent visits may result from clicks on natural search results, and/or PPC ads that are displayed as a result of progressively more-specific search terms.

The final conversion often happens following a brand- or site-specific search on a query like “Buy EOS Rebel XSi EF-S” or “B&H Photo.” But here’s the problem: the conversion is attributed to the most recent site visit. So the keyword that results in the ultimate conversion is highly valued by the PPC advertiser, all previous visits are disregarded, and the PPC keywords that elicited those earlier visits are undervalued.

This can lead to self-defeating bid management; the broad terms that send potential buyers to the site receive low bid prices, or worse, are shut off, since they don’t seem to be resulting in conversions. This short-sightedness afflicts advertisers using manual bid management strategies as well as most automated bid management software available.

Former Google employee Adam Goldberg is trying to lead the charge toward remedying this serious defficiency industry-wide. His company, ClearSaleing, offers analytics technology that lets advertisers track all of the site visits that lead up to the conversion, and attribute value to each action in the path.

That’s why today’s Search Marketing Now webcast, “Measuring an Ad’s Value: A Forum Discussion,” is a must-attend. Adam will lead a forum discussion intended to, in Adam’s words:

“…bring together the online marketing and advertising minds to work together as a community to help collectively identify, evaluate, vet and ultimately recommend the best attribution valuation practices and methodologies.”

We share Adam’s hope that the discussion will lead to better analytical tools from the search engines, and better bid management tools, that will incorporate attribution management that enables advertisers to make fully-informed ad investment decisions.

We’ll be participating in today’s forum, and we hope you will be, too.

Yahoo just made some nice changes to the YSM user interface:

Our latest enhancements aren’t going to make worldwide headlines, but they can help you do things like see at a glance which campaigns, ad groups and keywords are offline-and why. Here’s what you might notice the next time you log in:

• All names of objects (campaign, ad group, keyword, etc.) that are offline are displayed with red text for easy recognition.

• The ability to export (using the “Download” button) account information has been added to account-level Ad Group and Keyword pages, under the Campaigns tab.

Microsoft released a nice number of new adCenter features today – see the summary in this PDF document.

The good news: the features represent some much-needed improvements, especially in reporting capabilities. But they really just bring overall functionality closer to the 2006 version of Google AdWords – and still a distant third behind Google and Yahoo, not just in traffic but in user interface.

It’s sort of surprising that software giant Microsoft still hasn’t released a competitive ad platform, having started development in 2005. Yahoo’s been adding spiffy features at a faster pace – check out their campaign optimization and ad generator tools, for example.

But as I’ve said before: never underestimate Microsoft. Version 3.x is usually the killer app.

The Wall Street Journal just released a nice comparison of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo revenue and profit data. Click on the thumbnails for larger views; there’s an interactive version here.

Some observations:

• Yahoo’s fortunes seemed rosy in the 2.5 years after the Overture acquisition. They owned the search advertising space right up until the collision of Google’s superior AdWords UI with the rather disastrous Panama rollout. Wall Street noticed.
• Interesting that the launch of Microsoft adCenter isn’t included as a milestone. The launch didn’t affect the MS stock price, but it would at least fit the context of the graph.
• Impressive revenue per employee multiples: Microsoft = $690K, Google = $987K. Clix revenue per employee is almost as high as Microsoft’s – yessss!
• What makes up $3.94 billion of Google non-advertising revenue?!?
• Looks like Christmas 2007 shoppers boosted Google traffic by a huge amount – and they stayed post-Christmas.

Anybody besides me noticing that Yahoo! has become much more aggressive about training/supporting advertisers? Here’s more evidence: a webinar series that promises some meaty advice that could benefit advertisers on any platform. See the list below and register here.

Our friends at Engine Ready released two phenomenal goodies today: this list of negative keywords that you can (and should!) use in your PPC campaigns right now, and AdFlint, a cool tool for brainstorming variations in PPC Ad copy.

Dear Microsoft,

Here’s my advice on how to wisely invest a few of the billions you have left over after you gobble Yahoo:

1. Please ditch the adCenter web interface and use the Yahoo Panama interface. The adCenter UI has been an embarrassment from the moment the ultimate alpha male Ballmer kicked it out the door when it was still alpha code.

2. Please use a few spare programmers to create an offline Panama editor that lets advertisers and agencies manage their Panama/adCenter campaigns and their Google campaigns. As I advised a few years ago, your goal should be to make your online advertising services the place where advertisers start their campaigns (currently they/we start with Google and later – reluctantly – “migrate down” to Panama and adCenter) – and a consolidated offline editor would make agencies and big advertisers start with you in a heartbeat. Heck, you already own 90% of the code!

Thanks for listening.

P.S. Brian McAndrews (formerly aQuantive CEO) looks like a great choice to head up Microsoft’s advertising efforts. He clearly “gets” advertising and advertisers – as evidenced by his “State of the Advertising Union” missive yesterday:

I think it is safe to say that 2007 was a historic year for aQuantive, as we became the largest acquisition in the history of Microsoft. As a result, we enter 2008 as a combined entity, excited to take on the challenges and opportunities of the digital advertising world as the Microsoft Advertiser & Publisher Solutions (APS) group.

Of course, several key milestones happened in addition to the Microsoft acquisition, so I thought it might be helpful to start by sharing a brief recap of what we were up to before the acquisition closed and highlight the momentum we continue to generate as the APS group within Microsoft. A lot of work has gone into shaping this new organization and our integration efforts are paying off.

Looking back

In what would be aQuantive’s final earnings announcement on May 8, we enjoyed record growth for aQuantive and its three business units: Atlas, Avenue A | Razorfish and DRIVEpm. Each performed extremely well, with 42% organic growth and revenues of $142.6 million, an increase of 55 percent over the first quarter of 2006. Some of the top news highlights from our teams included:

• Abroad, Avenue A | Razorfish made an investment and formed a business alliance with Dentsu’s digital subsidiary Digital Palette in Japan, and acquired Duke in France.
• We introduced Atlas AdManager Version 10 to help digital publishers increase revenue from under-utilized impressions. This was our first innovation resulting from our Accipiter acquisition in December 2006.
• Atlas signed a global partnership deal with Media Contacts, the interactive arm of Havas, to support its global network, comprised of 30 cities in 23 countries.
• aQuantive was named #9 in Advertising Age‘s list of the World’s Top 25 Marketing Organizations – the first interactive operating company to crack the top 10.
• Avenue A | Razorfish was the No. 1 interactive agency in Advertising Age’s list of top interactive agencies.

The day Microsoft closed the acquisition of aQuantive on Aug. 10 was a pivotal moment not only for us but for the industry. Our new business group is now responsible for growing Microsoft’s ad platform to better serve the advertiser and publisher community. Under my leadership, the APS team helps build and market all components of our ad platform, including Atlas, DRIVEpm, MSNDR and Microsoft adCenter, along with emerging media types such as in-game (Massive) and mobile ads (Screentonic). It also includes Avenue A | Razorfish, one of the largest global interactive firms, led by CEO Clark Kokich.

Our vision is to make buying and selling media simpler, smarter and more cost-effective across media and devices in the Microsoft network of properties and beyond.

I am proud of the fact that we were able to secure some quick, yet significant wins following the deal close. We believe these wins communicate to the market that we are gathering momentum even as we continue to develop our roadmap for the year ahead. Here are a few:

• Atlas secured nearly 60 publisher wins in the second half of 2007, including significant deals with IAC, The Associated Press and Viacom.
• DRIVEpm opened offices in Australia, Germany, France and Italy last year. Combined with Microsoft’s owned and operated inventory and the recent syndication deals we recently made, we are firmly within the top five networks worldwide when evaluated on reach and available impressions.
• Microsoft’s investment in Facebook in November continues to position us as a strong and viable contender in the global digital advertising market.
• Microsoft adCenter launched its contextual advertising offering, ContentAds, as well as a beta of Project Gatineau, its new web analytics offering.
• Avenue A| Razorfish won 11 W3 awards, which recognize the power of web creativity, Amnesia, our Australian agency, won interactive agency of the year, and Forrester Research cited the AA|RF as an interactive marketing leader among only six other agencies.
• To finish off 2007, we signed a multi-year deal with Viacom (alluded to above) to be their ad syndication, discretionary inventory and content distribution partner.

Looking ahead

While search has been the main driver of the blistering growth of online advertising in the past, at least partially because of the “last ad clicked” performance measurement standard (pioneered by Atlas in the late 90s), we do not believe this will necessarily be the case in the coming years.

The current system for tracking ad conversions , while the best available for years, is not optimal because it gives all credit to that last ad seen or clicked – often a search engine – and not any credit to other ad units the consumer may have seen prior that helped influence the user to seek more information about the advertiser. Thus, Search has gotten more than its share of the credit, but that’s starting to change. We’ll be making significant inroads here in 2008 through our continuing ground-breaking work in the area of “conversion attribution,” a new Atlas technology offering that will do a better job of “giving credit where credit is due.”

That said, we’re not discounting the importance of Search as it continues to drive a lion’s share of digital advertising budgets. Our goal is to help advertisers and agencies make their Search campaigns as relevant, targeted and highly converting as possible. We’ve made great strides toward this end, and will continue to make deep investments in both our Live Search engine and Microsoft adCenter to improve the value of our Search offerings for customers.

We’re also excited by the opportunities we’ll see in emerging media formats this year.

Online video advertising will experience significant growth. In fact, video is expected to be the fastest growing ad category on the web for the foreseeable future. The alignment of factors including broadband penetration, the ubiquity of connected devices, audience shifts and video ad-serving advances mean online video is growing in popularity with both consumers and advertisers. Atlas was the first technology to integrate in-stream video into its product; we expect to continue to lead the way in this area.

In-game advertising will also begin to make meaningful inroads. With seven-figure deals and the metrics to make them pay, dynamic in-game advertising is growing up as a medium for branding and selling. With its unique insights into this non-interruptive, entertainment-oriented, highly interactive and user-directed environment, our subsidiary Massive is leading the way for marketers of every size and sector to incorporate games into multi-channel campaigns.

Mobile advertising is still a nascent market, but one with huge potential. Here you’ll see us invest in our Atlas toolset, working very closely with our subsidiary ScreenTonic and our colleagues in Windows Mobile, to make significant progress with new mobile advertiser and publisher tools, mobile syndication, and new advertising clients.

For advertisers specifically, the future of digital advertising is not about creating a video ad out of a recycled TV spot or designing a gimmicky web site camouflaged as a social media experience. Avenue A | Razorfish’s goal is to help advertisers get their brands into more conversations so they can empower consumers to share brand experiences with each other. Looking ahead, Avenue A | Razorfish will continue to help advertisers build relationships with their consumers through the power of social media. And be sure to look out for the agency’s 5th annual Digital Outlook Report at the end of February, which outlines media spending for the previous year and provides expectations and trends for 2008.

Through our combined resources, technical expertise and marketing experience, APS will deliver in 2008 on its unique offering for advertisers and publishers. It will no doubt be another incredible year and a fast ride.

You will certainly love what you see in my post today on the SEW Blog. I guarantee it. Go there now.