The structure of your AdWords account can have a huge impact on your performance. When organized correctly, your advertising dollars can easily be allocated to the highest-performing content and market spaces. I'll walk through the how and why of structured campaign creation through the use of performance and market space tiers.

1. Structured Campaigns in
Paid Online Media
SF Startup Marketing

2. About Me
Started working in online marketing in 2004
Worked for local digital marketing agency
Red Bricks Media (RBM) for 4 years
Past clients - Adobe, Beliefnet, BEA Systems,
Cisco (Ironport), Hearst Magazines, LA Times
Started at Change.org in March, 2011

3. About Change.org
Fastest-growing social activism platform
4 million members
4 million visitors per month
Victories happen every day
Currently hiring for a number of positions
(especially engineering)
For-profit company trying to make the world better
(yes, companies like that do exist)

4. What Am I Talking
About?
All of the big levers
and targeting options
exist at the campaign
level
Budget
Geo Targeting
Ad Scheduling

5. Don’t Do This!
Create campaigns by
‘theme’ - that’s what
ad groups are for
Mix ad types (image
vs. text)
Mix networks (search
vs. contextual vs.
retargeting vs. site
targeting.....)

6. Do This!
Create separate
campaigns for image
ads, contextual network,
search network, site
targeting, retargeting,
ad schedules, geographic
tiers, ad group
performance tiers,
acquisition goals......

7. That sounds like a pain,
why would I do that?

8. World Domination...or at
least an account that is
easy to optimize

9. Example 1 - What Not to
Do
Keyword # of % of
CPA Spend Conv. #
Type Keywords Budget
Good 10 10% $2 $10 5
Bad 90 90% $10 $90 9
Total 100 100% $7.14 $100 14

10. Example 2 - Same
Content, Different Results
Keyword # of % of
CPA Spend Conv. #
Type Keywords Budget
Good 10 80% $2 $80 40
Bad 90 20% $10 $20 2
Total 100 100% $2.38 $100 42

11. Trim the Fat
By systematically
segregating content and
targeting, 2 big things
happen
1. Optimization
opportunities are easier
to identify
2. Budgets can easily be
allocated to the top-
performing content

12. What if I’m NOT Budget
Constrained?
1. You’re doing it wrong
2.Can I have some?
3.Optimize for position - If your average
position isn’t 1, then you’re not fully
optimized and may not be truly budget
constrained.

13. How do I do it?
Ad group performance tiers
Setting performance tiers using mirrored
campaigns
Coded campaign and ad group naming
structure
Excel skills

14. Ad Group Performance
Tiers
Assuming you’ve micro-segmented your keywords...
1. Rank your ad groups in order of most valuable
impressions
2. Create 2 or more groups
3. Allocate as much budget as you can afford to the
top group
4. Whatever budget is left over spills over to the
lower tier(s)

15. Mirrored Campaigns
Have basically the same keywords, ads, etc.
The campaign settings are different (and bids
of course)
Make it possible to allocate budget due to
market space conditions such as geography
and day parting

16. Let’s say my business only
served California
Tier 1 Tier 2 Tier 3
X
XX
XX
I cluster similar performing content so I
don’t create 100 different GEO campaigns

17. How do you keep track
of all of those
campaigns and ad
groups?

18. GST_USER_USAT1_SCHT1_PERT1
GST = Google + Search Network + Text Ad
**(GCI = Google + Contextual Network + Image Ad)
USER = User Acquisition Campaign (LOB)
GEOT1 = Tier 1 USA Geography
SCHT1 = Tier 1 Ad Scheduleing
PERT1 = Tier 1 Ad Groups

19. Check it out

20. Ad Groups work the
same way
Just leave out the performance tier
information - this way you can easily move
the ad group between campaigns without
ever changing the name
Eg. Campaign -
GST_USER_AUST2_SCHT1_PERT1
Ad group -
GST_USER_AUST2_SCHT1_online_petition

21. Easy to filter in Excel or
MySQL
Since the ad groups and campaign names
contain rich information, I can now use filters
to easily determine how different type of
content are performing - Really great for
when the boss asks “How are those new
image ads performing in our [insert LOB
here] in India?”

22. Questions?