You may have carefully reviewed your campaigns’ settings when it first launched, but when was the last time you went in and fully optimized your campaigns in order to achieve maximum results? Below is a quick overview of Pay-per-Click campaign (PPC) settings offered by AdWords.

Geo Targeting: In what areas of the world do you want your ads to appear?

Languages: You can select from over forty different languages, which you can simultaneously target. It is important to keep in mind that you will need to translate the ads yourself, as this is not a service that Google provides.

Networks:  You have the ability to have your ads displayed on Google’s search result pages, partner search engines and within Google’s Display Network (publishers who agree to display your ads).

Devices: You can customize what devices you would like your ads displayed on, such as desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. You can even choose specific carriers.

Bidding options: Based on your campaign goals, you can determine which bidding option will get you results. A cost-per-click (CPC) bid is the amount you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad. You can have AdWords manage your bids by choosing automatic bidding, or you can manage the bids manually. In more advanced options, you can also choose to pay per thousand impressions (CPM bidding) or set a cost-per-acquisition bid (CPA). 
 
Budget: The daily budget you choose should be based on the advertising goals you have. Keep in mind, however, that the budget should be the amount you’re comfortable spending on AdWords advertising each day. To help guide your budget choice, AdWords automatically provides a recommended daily budget for each campaign. Note that your daily budget represents your average spend over the month; but actual spend on any given day may vary.

Position preference: This option lets you tell Google where you’d like your ad positioned among all the ads on a given page, but it does not guarantee that your ad will appear in the position you specify. Ranking and relevance rules still apply so if your ad doesn’t qualify for position #1, setting a position preference of 1 will not always position it there.

Delivery method: This setting will affect how quickly your ads are shown (still taking your budget into consideration). You have to determine if it is more beneficial use standard delivery which spreads out your ad impressions across the day to make sure don’t accrue all your clicks early on; or, you can use accelerated delivery to increase the likelihood of spending your full budget each day by showing your ads as quickly as possible.

Ad extensions: A feature that lets you add extra elements to your ads such as the address of your location, extra site or product links, and phone numbers.

Schedule: Set the start and end date for campaigns as well as which days of the week/hours of the day you wish for your ads to be shown.

What worked six months ago, may no longer work for you today. Google AdWords sets defaults, but they may not necessarily work best for your campaigns so it is important to take advantage of each one of their settings in order to control delivery of your ads and best optimize your campaigns.

Killing some time while waiting for a doctor’s appointment – we are completely engaged, open to new information and want to access it quickly.

If this is sounds like the perfect audience to target with your advertising, you are right – and recent reports show substantial growth in this segment. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s Mobile Access 2010 report, 6 in 10 adults in the United States go online using a wireless connection.

Your company or client has an incredible opportunity to engage the consumer through PPC and get them to take immediate action. With a simple click of a button (or touch on the screen), they are either on your website or connecting a call to the phone number in your ad.

The results in this report were based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between April 29 and May 30, 2010, among a sample of 2,252 adults, age 18 and older. A few quick highlights of the report show potentially how large the mobile audience can be:

• 82% of Pew survey respondents said they owned a mobile phone. That translates into roughly 187 million, out of 228 million US adults overall.
• 38% – 40% of that population goes online from their handsets, or about 75 million people  (for 18-29 yr olds that number is 65%).
• 55% of mobile Internet users are online via their mobile phones at least once a day and 43% are access the mobile Internet “several times a day.”

The study also found that a lower income level did not have much affect on Americans having mobile access by noting that “17% of those earning less than $30,000 per year are cell-only wireless users, as are 20% of those who have not graduated from high school and 15% of those who have graduated high school but have not attended college,” whereas “the affluent and well-educated have higher overall levels of wireless internet use due to their much higher rates of ownership and use of laptop computers.”

By observing patterns in an analytics program, one can gauge what type of SEM strategy should be implemented in order to understand how to best to reach their audience.  Search ads with a phone number on the ad may be enough, but mobile sites and applications such as Chipotle Mobile Ordering that let the user find the nearest location, build and order their burrito - probably have their good share of loyal repeat customers.