Google has announced that they are sunsetting the Accelerated delivery method for Search and Shopping campaigns, and replacing it with improved Standard delivery.
Here’s how the change will impact advertisers, and the steps you can take to prepare for the change.
Why Is This Change Important?
The ad delivery method determines the way Google serves your ads throughout the day based on your daily budget.
Accelerated delivery was typically used in an attempt to spend budgets faster.
Google explains the reasoning behind this change in its official explanation as:
“It’s not effective for campaigns that are not limited by budget. And for campaigns that are limited by budget, this method can increase CPCs due to increased competition early in the day, or unintentionally spend most of your budget in earlier time zones. Alternatively, Standard delivery takes into account expected ad performance throughout the day and is better at maximizing performance within your daily budget.”
Campaigns will be automatically switched to Standard delivery on October 7, 2019.
Accelerated delivery will no longer be available to use in any Search campaigns, Shopping campaigns or shared budget as of October 14, 2019.
However, accelerated delivery will continue to be available for Display campaigns and Video campaigns.
How Does This Impact You?
While it’s true we’re losing another lever to pull, it’s a change indicating Google’s machine learning is likely better able to handle ad delivery.
Google’s artificial intelligence has improved every year since it has debuted, and this is just the latest step in the machine’s capability to look at larger data sets with reasoning factored in.
Regardless of whether or not your campaigns were previously limited by budget, this will illuminate the need to ensure your campaigns are fully optimized in all other possible areas to maximize your daily budget and not miss out on any auctions from your campaign.
What You Should Do Next
Though Google says accelerated delivery “does not help in better utilization of budget,” we recommend to watch your campaigns closely for the following:
- Cost-per-click due to rollout affecting all of the auctions throughout the day. Competition in the earlier part of the day may decrease with an increase of competitors in auctions into the later hours of the day where budgets would have typically been exhausted.
- Account pacing should be closely watched as well as with potential CPC savings there may be room to allocate additional budget to campaigns.
- Revisit your ad scheduling set up to ensure bid adjustments are in place to increase/decrease bids based on the hour of day performance data to maximize conversions within your daily budget.
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