Q. "How can AdWords Campaign Manager possibly adjust so many individual unique keyword bids in just one operation?"

A. What's impossible for a human to do manually is often possible by computer. It's actually not that difficult for software to change unique maximum CPC bids simultaneously. Without giving away the secrets of AdWords Campaign Manager's algorithms, this is the principle of how it's done.

You give each individual keyword a "weight", plus or minus, for its competitiveness, compared to your main keyword. This is done only once, because each keyword's importance, RELATIVE to another's, is unlikely to change over time, even if its ACTUAL value does. (For a complete explanation of how to determine what this "weight" should be and how to do it, see the 'Hints' form in the ACM software interface.)

The "weight" can be an absolute cash amount or a percentage. AdWords Campaign Manager uses the "weight" of each keyword to calculate and recalculate the maximum CPC bid amount for every keyword phrase permutation containing the individual keywords whenever you change the single 'Base bid amount' value in the software interface. In this way you can adjust the maximum cost-per-click for hundreds or even thousands of keyword phrases in just a few seconds, simply by changing the 'Base bid amount'.

Q. "Is there a 'best' way to create an AdWords campaign?"

A. Your AdWords campaign strategy depends on your business aims.

1. If you focus all your attention on one particular market niche, you can create thousands of exact match keyword phrases, covering every conceivable permutation of search terms, and match them with a few thousand advertisements, while staying within Google’s maximum limits. Furthermore, you won’t need any negative keywords, thus saving a lot of work.
2. At the other extreme, if you spread your Google account over many campaigns, covering many different subjects, strategy 1 would soon exceed Google’s maximum limit for keywords. To keep the number of keyword phrases as few as possible would mean using broad match, with all its inherent drawbacks. You’d also probably need a huge number of negative keywords.
3. A middle road would be to generate phrase match keyword phrases for a reasonable number of campaigns. You’d still probably need a large number of negative keywords, of course.

AdWords Campaign Manager's flexibility spans the range between these extremes, as well as many other configurations, one of which is likely to provide a suitable strategy for your business.

Q. "How can you create a perfect AdWords campaign within Google's keyword limits?"

A. This can be a problem when using keyword-generating software. There's little point in creating thousands of keyword phrases, if you cannot control them. It's easy for a keyword generation program to exceed Google's maximum limit on keywords, when Google accepts only relatively few keywords per Ad Group.

AdWords Campaign Manager recognizes Google's maximum limits for keywords, text ads and Ad Groups, and adjusts its output automatically, so that you should always be able to create the "perfect" AdWords campaign.

Q. "How does AdWords Campaign Manager deal with Google's maximum limits?"

A. The AdWords Campaign Manager tells you if you will exceed Google's limits on keywords and text ads before you generate the lists. ACM divides the lists of keywords and text ads that exceed the Google maximum limits evenly into separate Ad Groups and numbers them automatically.

The flexibility of ACM provides a range of options from sheer "brute force", which is fine for small campaigns, and is the quickest method of generating keyword lists and text ads, to perfectly matching sets of keywords and text ads, which is necessary for large campaigns, and requires a little manual control. The sophisticated tools in AdWords Campaign Manager for matching keywords and advertisements and putting them into the same Ad Group make it quick and easy to ensure that even huge campaigns remain within the maximum limits imposed by Google.

Q. "Google allows separate CPC bids for Search Traffic, Content Network, Placements and Search Partners. How does AdWords Campaign Manager handle those?"

A. When Google first introduced separate CPC bids for the Content Network, it increased advertisers' interest in using AdSense ads tremendously. Suddenly it became much cheaper to advertise on AdSense web sites, whence the traffic was traditionally of poorer quality than from Search Traffic results. Now AdSense ads are far more profitable for advertisers than they were before.

AdWords Campaign Manager uses different algorithms in its calculations, catering for any kind of advertisement. We suggest using the "percentage" algorithm with a much lower 'Base bid amount' for Content Network ads, and a medium-level 'Base bid amount' for Google's Search Partners ads. The "percentage" algorithm gives you tighter control over all bids in relation to your 'Base bid amount'. For Placements, use the "absolute" dollar amount and set a slightly lower 'Base bid amount' than for Search Traffic ads. These are only suggestions, of course, and you can choose whatever combination suits your campaign best.

Q. "How does AdWords Campaign Manager help with split-testing my advertisements?"

A. Because AdWords Campaign Manager uses "brute force" impossible to achieve by a human, you no longer need to split-test ads at all. Just upload all the automatically generated Ad Variations to your campaign, ensure that the 'Optimise: Show better-performing ads more often (Recommended)' option is selected (default) in the Google 'Edit Campaign Settings' screen, and let Google display the best-performing ad according to its own algorithm.

Q. "Does AdWords Campaign Manager upload its processed data directly to my Google AdWords campaign?"

A. No. It is against Google's terms and conditions for third-party software to integrate with the AdWords Editor tool. AdWords Campaign Manager is separated from the Google interface, however, by only a simple copy-and-paste operation. Just click the 'Copy' button in ACM, and paste the clipboard contents into the Google interface. This means only one extra operation for the user and no law suit against us. Furthermore, the separation ensures that ACM will always work, even if Google changes its interface.

It would be expensive to use the Google API, involving extra programming for us and usage charges for our customers. It is not a practical alternative to a simple copy-and-paste operation.

Q. "Does AdWords Campaign Manager use Google's Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) function to generate ads containing the searcher's keywords?"

A. No. Although this primitive technique increases click-throughs to the landing page, Google cannot recognize it as a click-through because the advertisement text contains a placeholder, not the actual keyword. The click-through rate (CTR) of the keyword is reduced, thereby increasing its cost per click (CPC).

On the contrary, AdWords Campaign Manager creates an individual advertisement for every keyword, containing the actual keyword, thus increasing the keyword's CTR and reducing its CPC. This could be called the "brute force" method, practicable only for a computer program and beyond the capability of a human.

Q. "How does AdWords Campaign Manager compare with PPC Evolution?"

A. PPC Evolution appeared at the end of June 2009, and is very different from AdWords Campaign Manager in many ways. There seems to be only one area of overlap: keyword bid adjustment.

It's difficult to compare products that are designed for different purposes, but here's a chart that may help to clarify: