Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Oh, you gotta love affiliate marketing sometimes. So the new Adwords rules went live on Monday and I was on alert for the search landscape to change. Nothing happened. Spin forward 24 hours, and as the new ads begin to show on big name brands such as Next and Currys… I give my Adwords account repeated checks for unexpected clicks from long forgotten adgroups. It was all fine.
“Phew.” I thought. “My long-term bad habit of always deleting the contents of old adgroups but leaving the ads up in case I later decide to promote the merchant another way is OK - I’ve not missed anything!”
With a happy heart and secure that all was well, I wandered off and spent a rare night having quality time with Duncan (as opposed to obsessing over affiliate-world).
Happy Happy Joy Joy…
Imagine my sheer delight at the whimsical nature of Adwords when I awoke from my repose this morning and logged into my “A-OK” Adwords account and saw these two beautiful lines in a campaign that only usually has a spend of around £35 a day in total.
Yep. That’s right, a couple of old ads from before the dawn of time which had been prohibited due to trademark issues, suddenly lept into life, and buggered right off with my cash. The top one doesn’t even have an effing affiliate programme any more.
Of course, this is my own fault for being incautious, I had absolutely no idea those ads were there. I can’t even remember putting them into my account. I bet I wasn’t the only one getting a shock when I logged into my PPC account today!
My only consolation is that my adgroup budget saved me from losing any more than a couple of hundred quid… but it did put a wee bit of a hole in yesterdays profits.
Its a bit like Christmas in reverse is this. Google coming down your account chimney and leaving you a present to find in the morning. Except Father Google Christmas doesn’t leave you a nice present, he leaves you a big bill for something you didn’t want.
AARRGGGHHH!!!!!!!
May 7th, 2008 at 11:19 am
I had exactly the same thing happen to me yesterday, by 10am I had 2 calls from merchants telling me to stop ads that were showing up on their brand. Checked my adwords account and an adgroup that had been quiet for 3 years had sprung back into life! A quick snip of a few keywords and some negative matching soon sorted it out but I suspect Google had a good day yesterday as a result of all these changes.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:05 am
My adwords account had a delay on reporting until about 10pm so I couldn’t even monitor terms! Great….
I had to continually log into networks and look for high click volumes (and found a few abnormal ones) and then pause the relevant groups.
I still got hit by about the same amount as above.
Arghghghgh thanks G.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Lol lads. Oh well, misery loves company and I’m now officially feeling better about my misfortune. I just knew I wouldn’t be the only one stung by “Father Google Christmas”