I notice that Google offer an API for their AdWords programme. Firstly, is anyone aware of any applications available that make use of the API and allow people to manage their Adwords accounts from a standalone application? Secondly, would people find such an application useful and, if so, what specific features would you like to see? Thanks in advance for any input, Jamie
I would find such an application with a good interface EXTREMELY useful. What would the features I'd like to see in it be? 1) An option for setting Campaign X in adgroup Y to the minimum CPC for activating the keywords. 2) Setting all your keywords on Campaign X in adgroup Y to be closest to position Z (e.g. 2nd position), with the maximum cost per click allowed being "$C" (i.e. so I don't suddenly get listing that cost me more than I'm willing to pay per click. 3) A tool that automatically checks your CURRENT position, rather than your average one. That's for starters Any tool such as that with a good and easy to use interface would be greatly appreciated by a lot of adwords users. I'd personally cough up at least $29.95 one time for it, or $9.95 monthly to use it, IMO. You could make the price baed on the number of adgroups the person manages, the number of changes they use the software to make per month, or their average daily campaign cost - just a few ideas Adi Friedman TwoBelievers.com Web Holdings.
Nice to see someone putting up a wishlist. I've started work on it, been playing round with the API in C#. I'm actually surprised to see how rusty I am, last time I used it was for my dissertation... I certainly wouldn't be interested in selling it from the beginning, although that would be my ultimate aim. The best way by far to develop a good product is to make all betas free, and have an initial development period of at least a year. I imagine I'd make it available on the forums. Anyone else got any comments, suggestions? Jamie
Shoot me a PM if you need a tester, I'll be happy. I've beta tested a lot of different softwares in my life, so I'll probably be able to provide decent feedback and recommendations. More suggestions: 1) Put in your username & Pass once in the software, and you can just load it up and instantly watch all campaign / adgroup costs, conversions, details etc. in one screen with a collpasing menu system possibly - or something along these lines, rather than having to go through multiple pages to get the results you want. You should have a pulldown menu for date / time (from & to), like google currently has. Graphs or other illustrative representations of your spendings / conversions would be nice. 2) A button for displaying all your currently inactive keywords, arranged by campaign & adgroup. This should give you a taste of what you're missing out on. 3) For idea #2 - A checkbox next to each of those items, so that you could increase only those keywords you want to increase to the maximum bid (currently impossible via Google, you have to do it manually and it's a lot of headach compared to this way). Once you tick all the boxes, you hit submit and the tool takes care of it for you. On top of that, there should be two types of "parent" checkboxes - one that checks an entire adgroup for you, and one that checks an entire campaign. 4) A tool to link conversions with specific dollar amounts, on a per adgroup basis. Google currently doesn't have this, as far as I know. This way, you'll be able to see, dollar to dollar, what was your adgroup cost, and how much money it generated. The same should be true on a per keyword basis (i.e. cost for the keyword for the relative time frame, vs. overall profit from the keyword for the relative timeframe), as well as a per campaign. I hope this gives you some nice ideas to play around with. Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help. Adi Friedman TwoBelievers.com Web Holdings.
For anyone that's interested, there are a couple of parallel discussions on the boards over at WebmasterWorld (one started by me): http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum81/6416.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum81/6372.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum81/6407.htm