Stayed up until midnight to adjust your Black Friday budget? Worried about bids while on vacationing in the Caribbean? Don’t fret – Adwords Automated Rules has come to your rescue.

The new feature allows advertisers to schedule changes at campaign, ad group, keyword or ad level. You could set up a rule that enables your special promotion ads to appear at the time the sale goes live or maintain first page visibility by raising the maximum CPC when an ad falls below a certain position.

Image from Google Adwords Blog

You are limited to 10 active rules and Google does not recommend using Automated Rules for campaigns that have other automatic bid management settings enabled as they could conflict with each other. 

Creating rules makes the management of your Adwords account more efficient since you don’t need to log in every time a change is need. However, you must keep an eye on the rules to make sure they perform as expected and remember that the automated rules do not replace the need for consistent optimization and basic best practices.

Google is now using the technology behind Google Voice to measure the phone calls that Adwords generates for an advertiser.

This new feature is called Call Metrics and works by assigning a unique phone number for each campaign and inserting it as an additional line of ad copy for desktop and “high-end” mobile devices. The calls are routed to your business phone number, which you select and are then tracked in the interface.

This new feature is only available to a limited number of advertisers, however you can check out your Ad Extensions Tab to see if this option has been made available to you.

Call Metrics will allow you to track the amount of calls (and duration) to your business as result of your Adwords efforts. Even though Google plans to charge for Call Metrics in the future, being able to more accurately calculate your return on investment will allow for a more refined strategy and allocation of budget.

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.