Recently we’ve created a series of guides on various parts of the AdWords interface designed to help advertisers better understand all of the features and functionality available to them within AdWords, including:
- AdWords Ad Extensions
- AdWords Reporting via the Dimensions Tab
- AdWords Campaign Settings
- Creating & Analyzing AdWords Ads
- AdWords Audiences & the Audience Tab
In this post, we’ll focus on another area within the AdWords interface: the Auto Targets tab.
What Is the Google AdWords Auto Targets Tab?
Many people new to AdWords wonder what this tab even is – in fact the tab is irrelevant for some AdWords advertisers. The auto targets tab is a component of Google’s product listing ads. If you sell e-commerce products, you likely (and should) have a Google Merchant account. (As we mentioned in our guide to product extensions, two great resources on optimizing your Google Merchant feed are this video from our friends at PPC Hero and this tutorial from Practical E-Commerce). Product listing ads pull from that merchant feed, and the auto targets tab is your opportunity to get a more granular look at the performance of your product listing ad groupings, and also affords you the opportunity to manage bids on different products and product groupings.
What Can I Do in the Auto Targets Tab?
Again the auto targets tab is basically a dashboard to help you analyze and optimize the performance of your product listing ads. Elizabeth Marsten from Portent Interactive had a great post on pimping out product extension ads – once you’ve optimized your Google Merchant feed and your product extension ads, the next step is to analyze the performance of the different groups and manage bids accordingly. This is where your auto targets tab comes in:
As with keyword, ad, and ad group level views you can now look at the performance of each of these product listing ads and optimize performance by:
- Defining specific Max CPC bids for different product listings (increasing bids on ads that perform well, decreasing bids on ads that perform poorly, etc.).
- Pausing or deleting product listings that just aren’t efficient.
- Restructuring elements of your product listing campaign based on feedback within your account.
From this screen you can also incorporate new product targets based on product target fields from your Google Merchant account.
As with any component of your AdWords campaign, it’s important to measure performance and make adjustments accordingly, so if you’re an e-commerce advertiser doing a lot of volume via your product listing ads, understanding the auto targets tab and being able to optimize your listings based on actual data is key.
About the Author
Tom Demers is co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM LLC, a boutique Boston SEO firm offering search marketing consulting services including pay-per-click account management, a comprehensive SEO audit, content marketing services & strategies, reputation management for SEO and link building services for a variety of specific niches such as SEO for B2B companies.
You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help your business by getting in touch with Tom directly via email at tom at measuredsem.com, or by following him on Twitter.
This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.