Ad scheduling in Google Ads is assigned at the campaign level for any campaign type. This even includes Smart campaigns, which is a huge advantage. Why? Because while Smart campaigns do the heavy lifting for you, you’re not able to control much since they run on their own via Google’s algorithm. With ad scheduling, you can still regain at least some control over the campaign’s behavior.
All of the above with plenty of pro tips sprinkled in. So let’s get started.
- What ad scheduling is and how it saves you money.
- How to set up ad scheduling in Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.
- The perks, drawbacks, and important details you need to know for best results.
Additionally, being able to set this solely at the campaign level regardless of campaign type will help unify your ad groups and make things easier to manage at a high level. Ad schedules can get quite in depth, so the more you can make your scheduling strategy cohesive across your campaigns, the better.
What is ad scheduling?
One thing to note here is that if you’re leveraging Microsoft Auto Import to copy your Google Ads components over to Microsoft, then you’ll quickly find that you’ll want to manually manage your ad schedules between platforms since you’ll most likely be setting them up differently.
From there, you’ll be able to select what days or times you’d like to show just like in Google and Microsoft. Since Facebook can show to such large audiences, this is a great tool to ensure you always show at the right time: when it’s worth your money!
By default, all ad campaigns across platforms are due to run 24/7. Ad scheduling is the practice of limiting your campaigns to run only on certain days of the week and hours of the day. This way, you can ensure your ads are only showing during specific days/times that you know you’ll get the highest return on ad spend.
The perks of ad scheduling in Google Ads
If you’re a small business in a large digital advertising space, then you know there’s one constant mantra in making your PPC work: Every. Penny. Counts! That’s right, if you want to thrive in PPC advertising, you need to stretch that budget of yours as far as you can.
Before you set up your ad schedule, use the tools available to you to identify the best one for your business and campaign.
Another major advantage of Microsoft Ads schedules over Google Ads schedules is that your ad schedule dynamically adjusts to the timezone of the viewer.That’s right, while it may take more finesse to incorporate all timezones into your scheduling plan on Google Ads, over on Microsoft, the platform does the heavy lifting.
Google Ads scheduling drawbacks
Ad schedule bid adjustments can only be made if a campaign is on a manual bidding strategy.
- Google ad schedules default to the time zone your account is set to.
- Once you set up your Google account, the time zone you set cannot be changed later on.
- You can only choose one time zone.
So in this post, I’m going to uncover the money-saving magic, as well as the finer details—of ad scheduling. We’ll talk about:
Once you’re in a Facebook campaign’s ad set that’s leveraging a lifetime budget, simply click into the “Show More Options” portion of the Budgets & Schedule section of the ad set editor.
So, though the requirement is to have a manual bidding strategy to try out this loophole, it’s truly not one size fits all and there are opportunities for bid adjustments for every account type!
How to set up ad scheduling in Google Ads
What this means is, if you’re running Google ads in multiple time zones, you’ll need to stretch your ad schedule to cover both zones. So if you want your ad to show on both the east and west coast from 1-4pm in both time zones, you’ll need to do the math and set your ad schedule for 1pm-7pm. This isn’t ideal if you don’t want to run past 4pm on the east coast.
1. View your historical data
On top of giving us much more to play with when it comes to ad schedules, Microsoft also has two different spots where you can create and adjust ad schedules. The first being the campaign level settings, and the second being the actual ad schedule section on the left hand panel.
In some cases with Google Ad scheduling, wasting spend is unavoidable. But if you do the math, you can mitigate this as much as possible.
For example, I can look at my data to identify that Mondays between 9am-5pm is my best converting time. But on the opposite end, I spend on clicks on Sundays at 3am that are not converting. Therefore, I may want to adjust my ads to only run on weekdays from 9am-5pm, and not on weekends when I know this will be wasted spend.
First, select the campaign you’d like to apply this to on the far left dark gray panel of the Google Ads screen.
Not only does it allow us to set at the campaign level, but it can also be set at the ad group level. Additionally, you can even apply ad schedules to individual ad extensions.
Or, even if you still wanted to leverage ad schedules to stop running 24/7 you can still apply bid adjustments on a more restrictive ad schedule. However, with any bid adjustment, they will only be taken into account if the campaign is on a manual bid strategy.
So, one workaround would be to set up an ad schedule that would still be inclusive of all hours and days. Then, add on schedule sets of what days or hours you’d want to bid up or down on to manage those separately.
How to set up Microsoft ad scheduling
The key initial step to setting up a strong ad schedule is to analyze your historical data.
Under the “Settings” option (you may have to click “+More), you’ll then select the “Ad Schedule” section
Google ad scheduling can apply to any campaign type, including Smart campaigns.
Before you set up scheduling in Google Ads, there are three things about time zones you need to know:
One note…
One possible workaround would be to create separate campaigns and adjust those ad schedules zones accordingly, but this account structure get hairy and you’ll still need to do the math.
Ad scheduling saves you money by only showing your ads on the days and times they best perform.
