AdWords Shared Library – PPC Chat Streamcap

This week Matt Umbro (@Matt_Umbro) came up with yet another great question set titled “AdWords Shared Library.” The following is the transcribed Streamcap from the live chat:

Q1: Do you make use of any features in the shared library? If so, which ones and why?

• Yes, every option, though not for every client. Audiences is most common use for me. – Nate Knox (@nateknox)
• Remarketing audiences & negative keyword lists – convenience! – Timothy Jensen (@timothyjjensen)
• Shared budgets FTW! Because shared budgets are easier than multiple individual campaign budgets for simple campaigns. – Melissa Mackey (@Mel66)
• Shared audiences I do. – Matthew Umbro (@Matt_Umbro)
• Shared Budget -> Because its awesome! And also Remarketing as we don’t use GA for that yet. And negative keyword lists. – Ravi Sodha (@ravisodha)
• Sure, all of them, I guess. I like negative keyword lists in particular… – Martin Rottgerding (@bloomarty)
• egative Keyword Lists: Always and the best feature in the library! Audiences for Remarketing: Quite Often. Budgets: Sometimes. – James Svoboda (@Realicity)
• Shared negatives are nice, but sure would be great to be able to see them in AE as I manage individual camps in Adwords Editor. – Max Fink (@maxfink_SEM)
• Mostly use the Campaign Negative Keyword Lists. – Cody Blair (@TheCodyBlair)
• I loved using shared budgets across device/intent segmented campaigns, but EC makes shared budgets kinda useless for me. – Gil Hong (@ghong_af)
• Shared audiences. We use a 3rd party tool for shared negatives. – Jeremy Brown (@JBGuru)
• Negative keyword lists for account-wide negatives. Same for placements. – Bethany Bey (@Bethany_Bey)
• I tend to use campaign negatives (keywords & placements) at the initial build/launch, then go forward with specific negatives. – Nate Knox

Q2: Have you used the shared budget feature? If so, in what situations and how do you feel it works best?

• I use shared budgets for low-spend clients that are always budget-limited. Reduces time spent monitoring pacing. That said, shared budget can favor one campaign over others; still need to monitor & adjust. – Melissa Mackey
  • I agree with Melissa that shared budget can be good for smaller campaigns, just need to monitor dispersal of budget. – Matt Umbro
• Yes, but only to keep things completely reigned back when making significant changes. EC is going to kill that use for me. – Nate Knox
• When first testing out display and I have one budget but multiple display campaigns. – Bethany Bey
• Organizing device/intent segmented campaigns by budget. E.g. maintaining one mobile budget across promo campaigns, targets,etc. – Gil Hong
• I don’t use shared budget specifically because of one campaign potentially canobalizing the budget. – Matt Umbro
  • I agree about the cannibalization issues – not enough control. – Julie Bacchini (@NeptuneMoon)
  • I see it more like giving a robust campaign extra funds when ear-marked budgets don’t spend out well. – Gil Hong
• We don’t use. We have 3rd party features which are similar in the rare cases we need them. – Jeremy Brown
• IME it works best on large branded campaigns where you don’t necessarily have a capped budget–helps keep things simple I guess. – Max Fink
• Shared budgets are helpful when you have two campaigns just for the sake of order, like separate brands. Shared budgets are no more or less cannibalizing then adgroups in a single campaign. – Martin Rottgerding
  • Good point, but you can then break out ad groups into own campaigns which technically you can just stop the shared budget with a campaign that cannibalizes the others. – Matt Umbro
    • Yeah, and it’s the same with shared budgets: if something needs a separate budget (or breathing room), separate it. – Martin Rottgerding
• I use them for geo-targeted campaigs. Best used when one of the campaigns isn’t a big spender. – Ravi Sodha
  • That seems like a good way to test your markets w/ limited budget. – Gil Hong
• I won’t use shared budget until after data collecting phase because it makes it tough to split test between different campaigns. – Bryan Cisler (@Bryan_Cisler)
• Does Bing have a Shared Budget feature? – Eric Bryant (@GnosisArts)
• I purposely structure accounts in a way that doesn’t require shared budgets. Smaller budget=less campaigns. – Niki Grant (@TheNikiGrant)
• IMO Shared budgets are wonky. They cap all campaigns sharing them instead of being used as an overflow on higer volume days. – James Svoboda
• Shared budgets are helpful when there’s no cannibalization. They make a nice addition to the toolbox. Nothing more. – Martin Rottgerding

Q3: How will the introduction of Enhanced Campaigns affect how you use the shared library?

• It won’t make a difference – Re-marketing, budgets, negatives and placements remain unchanged by the updates. – Niki Grant
  • Sometimes smaller budgets can = more campaigns to make sure testing doesn’t drag down high QS elements. – Gil Hong
• Enhanced campaigns basically make mobile/desktop/tablet one big shared budget. – Gil Hong
• It won’t change much for me, except for my mobile campaigns, of course. I may used share budgets right away for more control. Enhanced Campaigns won’t impact negatives, exclusions, or audience types for me … yet! – Nate Knox
• Enhanced campaigns basically make mobile/desktop/tablet one big shared budget. – Brian Gaspar (@BGaspar)
• No direct impact. Maybe if someone has different negatives depending on device… can’t think of an example. – Martin Rottgerding
• Not much at all. However, if tablet bidding isn’t separated, then might have to pull back on certain budgets. – Jeremy Brown
• Would be interesting to create device specific remarketing lists though. – Martin Rottgerding
• Mobile ads will need different landers so I will possibly be building 2 different audience segments for remarketing. – Josiah Colt (@_kingjosiah_)

Q4: Do you feel PPC Specialists understand the notion of the shared library and how to fully utilize this resource? Why or why not?

• If they don’t you could hardly call them “specialists” right? – Max Fink
  • Not necessarily…specialists might not use the shared library and do these manually…which isn’t necessarly bad. – Matt Umbro
    • Yeah, but your question was whether they understand the notion, not whether they use it. – Max Fink
• To many I’ve talked to, Shared Library is a “set it and forget it” type of tool. – Nate Knox
• The only one I use regular out of there is Audienes. – Eric Bryant
• PPC specialists… some, but I’m always surprised to see how slow many agencies are adopting new features. – Martin Rottgerding
• Honestly, sometimes I forget, having learning on an AdWords UI from eons ago. – Elizabeth Marsten (@ebkendo)
  • Good point. I think most live in Editor and can lose sight of UI features. – James Svoboda
    • Exactly, if you’re zooming along and you haven’t made it a habit. – Elizabeth Marsten
  • It’s funny because we loathe EC for potentially saving time while we applaud the shared library. Perhaps because the shared library gives us more control. – Matt Umbro
• I remember before discovering the shared library going a roundabout way to view remarketing lists – definitely a time saver but in answer to the question, I don’t think it’s an obvious feature to many PPC specialists until you’ve spent some time. – Timothy Jensen
• Aside from remarketing, we have better shared features in a 3rd party tool so I’m not very focused on it. – Jeremy Brown
• Regular folks managing their accounts never know about things like shared libraries. – Martin Rottgerding
  • Yea seems like ppc specialist “figure it out” to save time on making changes across multiple accounts. – Gil Hong
    • Some do… but out there is someone looking at #ppcchat, thinking ‘shared what?’ – Martin Rottgerding
• Probably not to its fullest extent. But IMO each client requires different tools to make the management smoother. – Gil Hong

Q5: Should more features be added to the shared library? Which ones and why?

• URL auto-tagging! – Jessica Fisher (@jessicamfisher)
• I can see shared targeting or even other shared settings to be useful to some extent. – Gil Hong
  • Shared settings would rule. – Melissa Mackey
• Shared Library in AdWords Editor. – James Svoboda
• Already mentioned but I wish upon a star: add Shared Libs into AE! Shared Sitelinks might be nice if you could override them at AG. – Max Fink
• Shared bid adjustments could be nice. Thinking in terms of a thousand geo adjustments. – Martin Rottgerding
• Any extensions that could be shared across campaigns for easy setup in one place – sitelinks, phone, offers, etc. – Timothy Jensen
• An MCC shared library would be cool as well – guess everyone has a general list of negative keywords for all accounts. – Martin Rottgerding
• Shared locations would be really great. – James Svoboda
• What about shared changes? If you make a change, you can access the actions you took and apply them to another account as well. – Jessica Fisher
• One quick irrelevant grammar observation from the shared library: The first sentence says “Shared library contains things that can be shared with multiple campaigns and ad groups” Anyone feel that the word “things” is a bad word choice. What about “tasks” and/ or “procedures” – Matt Umbro
  • Funny since they state “setting” right underneath it, implying that’s what “things” are referring to. – Gil Hong
• More shared items would be nice, but they would really have to support those in the API (which they don’t now). – Jeremy Brown
• Ad Groups would be nice. – James Svoboda

Q6: How would you make the shared library more upfront within the interface for advertisers to access/use?

• By making it accessible in AdWords Editor. – Jessica Fisher
• At least put a link under Tools in the interface. – Jeremy Brown
• Awareness is a key to usage. I’d make it more apparent in Campaigns UI how and where shared library items connect within it. – James Svoboda
• Make it more visible. Perhaps having its own tab with Home, Campaigns, Opportunities, etc. Also adding it to AE! - Gil Hong
• Even a check box in AdWords or the interface for something like “do you want to use these negatives in other campaigns?” – Matt Umbro
• Also, make the shared library available in the keyword tool. – James Svoboda
• As a follow up question, how could the notion of a shared library work with Facebook or LinkedIn?
  • First FB should try to make their current ad options work–anyone who has tried to geo target on zip would know it’s a lost cause! – Max Fink
  • Shared Audiences/Demographic settings would be great. You could add a newly found intent and it could apply to all ads & campaigns. – James Svoboda

Resources

• Google AdWords Editor (version as of today’s PPCChat 9.9.0)
• Microsoft adCenter Desktop
• http://www.google.com/ads/answers/
• PPCChat Member List (Twitter)
• adCenter Feature Suggestion
• Bing Keyword Research Tool

More PPC Chats

Don’t forget to stay tuned for the next #PPCchat on Tuesday at 12 noon Eastern, 9 am Pacific and 5pm in the UK. Same Chat time, same Chat channel.

Participants

Check out the PPC Chat Twitter list to see and connect with all current and prior participants.

Sharing the Library of Streamcaps

This is a guest post by Paul Kragthorpe; Internet Marketing Agency in Minneapolis, Minnesota, #PPCChat Streamcap Grabber, Search Marketing Blog Author. Connect with me @PaulKragthorpe, and Google Plus.
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Tags: Google AdWords, Pay-Per-Click (PPC), ppcchat, shared library

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2013 at 6:03 pm by Paul Kragthorpe and is filed under Pay-Per-Click (PPC), PPC Chat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.