Google's Budget Optimiser tool is a joke

Google just introduced the Budget Optimiser tool. In short:

I decided to give it a try yesterday, but quickly reverted to the old situation where I set the Max CPCs. Literally within an hour, the Max CPC of two of my most frequently served ads had been raised by 500% , effectively limiting the possible number of clicks to only one third of what I received before.

This tool is a joke. All it does, is make sure your daily budget is used to the max, if not by raising the number of clicks than by raising the cost per click. So it does optimise the budget. Google's budget, that is.

 

I've activated a couple of ads to see how it goes. What made me laugh was the traffic estimation. For example, the number of clicks per month was given as 2500 @ 0.04 per click on a monthly budget of 20.00 but a quick check of the arithmetic shows that 0.04 x 500 = 20.00.

Does this mean I get 2000 free clicks, I wonder?

 

I enabled the Budget Optimizer and it didn't change anything. All clicks were $0.05 and I barely spent 60% of the budget. I will wait a couple more days to see what happens but I expected it would raise my MaxCPC to $0.25.

 

All those tools including the new Ad Automator are just ways for them where you give them permission to open the floodgates. It will just enable them to get as much money automatically out of you as they can.

Just think about it for a sec. They can not make more people search so there's an upper treshold to traffic numbers for a given phrase even a tool like this can not change.

I'd be vigilant using those floodgate switches. Who would you like to be in control of your bank account?

 

Google if the money was coming in.

 

All of their budgeting tools are a joke.

 

I'm pretty far in the camp of beleiving you need to put eyeballs on the bids to manage them most effectively. Unless you are a huge corporation running a branding campaign that wants position 1-2 and doesn't care about the cost, autobid systems don't seem to work in the advertiser's best interest.

 

yep!

Google is not as helpful as they used to be.

 

Their budget estimator and Max CPC recommendations have always been terrible.

 

I'm not fond of the budget optimizer either.

 

I'm giving it a trial run now. Many of you haven't had a good time with it but I have to see for myself whether it will work for me. I'll report back in a few days.

AmCy

 

Well, I gave it ten days and it just didn't cut it at all. It seemed obsessed with only serving the lowest priced ad at the expense of all others and the traffic estimations were totally useless.

So even though I put in a bid range, the only ad served was the 0.04, which as you can probably guess, was not particularly useful for getting clicks since it was only shown about 5 times in ten days, which is considerably less than I usually get with that ad campaign. The campaign is now back on regular settings and is beginning to pick up again although it may be that it gets booted now for having a low ctr. Have to wait and see.

If you are going to try out the "budget optimizer", set up a fresh campaign just for the job. If it is useless, you won't have to worry about your ad plummeting down the ad rankings due to lack of click-throughs and 'relevancy'.

 

I gave it 48 hours. The spend more than doubled and I got about 30% more clicks...

All it is is saying to Google, please spend this X amount and get me as many clicks as you can get. I'd rather keep myself in the driving seat...

 

I haven't even touched it. I already have a "Budget Optimizer", me! I don't like giving control of my budget to the company that benefits from increasing it.

 

it wont work cause google is in it to make money for themselves; not for you. They rig it so you have to pay more per click for a higher price that won't yield any more conversions.