Google Budget Optimizer Trial results
Below is Googles description of the Budget Optimizer tool.
When you enable this tool, our system will automatically adjust your keyword maximum cost-per-click (CPC) amounts on your behalf. All you need to do is set a target budget, and the Budget Optimizer will actively seek out the most clicks possible within that budget.
Read more about Budget Optimizer
We conducted a trial of this tool to see if it would work as described. We used an existing well established AdWords Campaign so that we would have something to compare the new results to. Before Budget Optimizer is activated, it will actually provide the option of saving the current campaign settings in case the user would like to revert to them.
The results were that the campaign did not perform as well as it had prior to using the Budget Optimizer. Basically the Optimizer did not perform as well as our human edited and optimized campaign.
The theory is great but the results were, lots of keywords became inactive because CPC was reduced by the optimizer, which lead to fewer of our ads being shown in the top 8 or first page results. Naturally lower daily clicks, CTR, impressions followed.
There may be some cases where the optimizer would be useful. It was be a value ad if Google could get the optimizer to recognize which words were no longer active because the CPC was too low and adjust automatically.
