Who doesn’t want to use their marketing budget to its fullest potential? We all want to reach as many relevant consumers as possible with every ad dollar spent, right? When Google announced it was ending Accelerated Ad Delivery many people’s first thought was, “No problem. I’m using Standard Delivery. I’m not impacted.” BUT are there potentially unforeseen implications to this change for the CPC ad model and market?
Accelerated Ad Delivery has front loaded the priority of auction style bidding toward the early part of the day or campaign schedule. This made since for some business models… Like that guy who ran the little lunch joint around the corner, who’s restaurant is too small for family dinners, who needed morning ad performance in order to fill his tables for lunch. Or the lube shop manager who needed to keep the bays full in the morning to ensure he’s profitable every day.
This increased competition in the early hours of the day, which does make since for a few businesses, lead to increased morning CPCs, and a faster overall spend of their ad budget.
Google will switch a multitude of Accelerated Delivery campaigns to Standard Delivery in October. Standard Delivery is a much more prevalent strategy for bidding for relevant ad space, and it aims to evenly spend an ad budget throughout the day. This typically returns a more efficient overall CPC and uses marketers’ budgets to their fullest potential.
That improved overall ROI for most campaigns would be a win, right? That is exactly why Google is hitting the brakes on Accelerated Ad Delivery at the end of this month (Oct. 1st). It’s a trade of morning priority for overall effectiveness.
Google warns that the change from Accelerated delivery to Standard delivery may result in an underspend of your budget if you were previously using Accelerated Delivery. But, consider what happens to the number of bids throughout the rest of the day. If Google takes the “morning rush” and spreads it throughout the day, will that be a significant amount of bid pressure? Will Advertisers be impacted by this leading to higher average CPCs across the entire day?
Google is the Goliath in the CPC bidding, and swinging even a small portion of their customers into another delivery strategy could carry significant weight and affect ROI for the larger portion of advertisers and marketers bidding for ad space every day. Could this little change, this removal of a customer option for the improvement of their own ROI, ultimately result in decreased ROI and effectiveness for most of the campaigns that were already running standard delivery ads?
Only time, and analytics reporting will tell… Maybe, I’m right and forward thinking, or maybe I’m just a little paranoid because I’m always looking out for my customers’ ad dollars like they’re my own… If you are looking for advice on how to best set up your Google campaign for optimal performance, contact Brand Ranch Media, and we will treat your ad dollars just as we would our own.
Source: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2404248?hl=en