Being an adwords noob, I gotta ask if this is a good thing or a bad thing...

goog researched the ROAS, saw that most on CO will benefit from a different ad rotation setting, and is switching everyone over automatically, then giving you the option afterwards to switch back to the rotation of your choice.

if you're the advertiser, that's a good thing. if you compete with them, it's a bad thing. if you're G, it's a good thing, when ROAS goes up, advertisers tend to increase their spend budgets. if you're a consumer, it raises relevancy ever so slightly, so that's a good thing. if you're an affiliate (and don't have access to a closed conversion feedback look), it's a bad thing. if you don't have enough volume to qualify for the CO, it's a bad thing. if you're left handed,...

...if you don't have enough volume to qualify for the CO, it's a bad thing.

Well, I WON'T have enough volume to qualify for CO.

Does that mean I will get booted out of Adwords?

no.

how do you get "booted out of adwords" from what i said.
:-)

you will be fine. in fact, it won't directly affect you at all (if you're not using the Conversion Optimizer).

if you don't have enough volume, you can't use the Conversion Optimizer. this isn't new. this isn't changing either. i was making the point here, that if you're not eligible to use this tool, you're missing out on this change, which they claim yields "5% increase in conversions on average".

@ RhinoFish

how do you get "booted out of adwords" from what i said.
:-)

Well, you did say if you don't have enough volume to use CO, it was a bad thing, and me, being ever the pessimist, assumed that google would kick me out of adwords, along with coming over to my house and kicking my dog, insulting my son's haircut, and probably forcing me to eat my mother-in-law's cooking...

Sorry. 2011 has been kind of a tough year. Maybe in 2012 I will be able to have a day off...

I actually tried Conversion Optimizer, and my sales dropped by 10%, and they cost me more. They went back to normal when I turned it off. I gave it a month.

Now I hear some people do have success with conversion optimizer. I guess it has to do with the type of business you are in.

From my experience with the current adwords decision makeing tools; is that they are making assumptions, based on too little data.

Google really needs to hire a statitician, as there testing methods introduces bias; and they do not test anywhere near the 95% confididence interval.

The worst offender is the "ad rotation" feature. If you are doing a/b testing, do it yourself; make sure ads are rotated evely during the testing and plug your results in a a/b testing significance calculator, and don't make a decision until you have a 95% confidence interval, and preferably a 99% confidence interval.

If you use your gut feeling, you will be wrong most of the time. I'ts human nature to detect patterns where none exist.

Don't get me wrong. I Love google adwords, its just that they have dropped the ball on unbias statistical sampling. Hopefully someday they will introduce rigourous statistical tools, that the average joe/jill can understand and use.

If you are enough of a cheapskate to use a free conversion optimization tool over a battle-tested and engine-neutral SEM management solution, you deserve what you get, which usually is poor campaign performance.