A/B testing your PPC: Is too much detrimental?

“Could too much A/B testing be detrimental to PPC?” asks Matt Van Wagner of Find Me Faster at a recent SEMNE event.  Follow Matt Van Wagner’s SEMNE slideshow to see how to obtain advertising success on the internet.

A/B testing:  Which message resonates best with your target audience?

• Run ads to create performance profile
• Find out which ad is the best

Reasons why AdWords fail

• Keywords don’t match queries
• Ad impressions doesn’t equal number of searchers
• Ad rotation isn’t even/balanced
• A/B testing will give you the best ad, not designed to give you your highest performing ad group
• As many of 50% of searches are repeats, and they happen in hotspots, search up to 20 times
• 5-20 impressions could be just one person
• Quality score impacts ad rotation, so rotation might not be even

Winning ads perpetuate themselves

• A few well-performing ads will be more effective, we forget that individuals with personal preferences are doing the searches
  • Humans can out-smart the algorithms
  • “Save 20%” message vs “eco” message: these are two different demographics you’re speaking with
  • Keeping multiple ads gives a fighting chance to engage with divergent populations. Why would you only write ads for men and cut out women?
  • 5 well-performing ads will outpace one top-seller

Google is trying to make money, so if you didn’t click on the first ad, it’ll show you another version

• After 1 search you’ll see different results, by the time visitors search 4 times there’s a 93.75% chance that visitors are seeing both ads

Bottom line: Don’t be so quick to kill off ads that are performing until you have a top 5 and keep testing

• Don’t try to reduce to 1 ad
• Test more combinations
• Ad sets can mask the performance of poorly performing ad groups
• Set ad rotation to even

Broad Match Modifier

• Create keywords that give you more control than broad, more flexibility than phrase match
• Use + sign in front of broad-match keyword
• Now available in the US, think how can use broad match to direct traffic to targeted places.