Google AdWords Launch Shared Budget Feature: Should You Use It?

When it comes to pay per click (PPC) advertising, many companies choose to work with Google AdWords. With this tool, companies can create their own ads that will appear on Google, choose their keywords and set their own budget. Your company only pays when the ad is clicked, and you can change your ad or create others whenever you feel like it to ensure that you’re getting the biggest bang for your buck.

Before, AdWords required that your company create a separate budget for each ad that you created. Now, AdWords recently announced that they will be launching a new feature that allows users to share their budget across multiple advertisements. As long as you are using one single account, each campaign that you create can be shared through one budget instead of having a separate one for each campaign.

What is the purpose of a shared AdWords budget?

Google is launching this new feature so that marketers can focus on one daily budget for all campaigns instead of trying to manage multiple budgets. They also feel as if having one budget allows the company to allocate the funds in the best way so that they can focus on the campaigns that are not as successful.

What are the benefits of a shared AdWords budget?

One benefit of a shared AdWords budget is that you now only need to focus on one set budget instead of trying to maintain multiple budgets for multiple campaigns. This can make the entire PPC ad management process much easier. Another benefit is that it can help those ads that aren’t doing so well by allocating more of the budget to help those improve while maintaining the consistent budget of those ads that are already successful.

What are the disadvantages of a shared AdWords budget?

The biggest disadvantage that most users and critics are seeing is that they’re unsure how the shared budget idea will work successfully. First, if a company has multiple campaigns, their one budget will need to be separated so that each campaign receives a piece. But Google AdWords is not going to separate the budget equally among all campaigns—it’s going to continue to give the most money to the campaigns that are already working. This means that ads that aren’t doing so well or don’t utilize the keywords with the best search volume are not going to have as big of a piece as the ads that are successful.

Others fear that having a shared budget will not allow all campaigns to gather the right data. If an ad is not successful, it’s not going to earn the accurate amount of impressions if it’s sharing a budget with other ads. This can make an ad look like it’s generating worse results than it actually is.

Summary

The nice thing about the shared budget feature is that Google made it very easy to use. You can share your budget through the Budget tab found in the Shared Library. There’s detailed instructions on how to implement it.

Since the shared budget feature is still new, most people are going to be skeptical of its effectiveness. If having a shared budget for your campaigns interests you, you can always try it out and see how your campaigns react to the new feature. Trying it out is the only way to learn.

Author's Bio: Jacob Smith is a marketing specialist and writer for SEOMap together with their team of SEO consultants they develop facts-based SEO keyword strategies for global corporations.