Google recently announced support for dayparting or 'ad scheduling' for AdWords campaigns. Dayparting allows an advertiser to determine an hourly schedule for online ads. If you can determine the hours in which an ad produces better results, you can improve your visibility.

Google recently announced support for dayparting or 'ad scheduling' for AdWords campaigns. Dayparting allows an advertiser to determine an hourly schedule for online ads. If you can determine the hours in which an ad produces better results, you can improve your visibility during 'on' times and reduce advertising costs during 'off' times.

Dayparting can have benefits for both B2B sites and e-commerce sites. A US-based B2B site owner might limit some ads into European time zones, and then start a higher volume of US campaigns during US business hours. A site with a shopping cart might boost ad quantity and positions during peak buying times which include lunch hours and evening shoppers.

Determine if some times are better than others.

Before limiting ads to certain times, advertisers must understand what times of day deliver better results than others. Determining quality of visitors can be tricky. While ROI and conversion are important, a good starting point is to compare average time on site (ATOS) across two time periods.

ATOS is most valuable when compared between two or more visitor types. For example, PPC ads with a higher ATOS than the average visitor ATOS are probably performing well. In this example, we'll compare ATOS for each PPC ad across two time periods.

A higher ATOS during business hours indicates high quality of visitors during that time. In the example below, visitors that came through PPC ads spent roughly twice the time on site during business hours when compared to visitors who came in after business hours.

Compare two time periods for highest ATOS for each ad

When comparing the ATOS for each ad, this business should consider boosting ad visibility during business hours (8 am - 5 pm) for all ad keywords except "steam cleaners" ( In fact, the "steam cleaners" ad seems to be performing poorly when compared to the average visitors time on site, and might be in need of attention). Before making decisions based on ATOS, the advertiser should get a validity check against visitor count, conversion or ROI numbers for each ad.

Week Parting

Do the visitors that come through your PPC ads on weekends have a high ATOS and good conversion? The same measurements that work for dayparting can be applied to "week parting". Money saved from stopping weekend ads could be redirected to improve weekday volume. The new Google ad scheduling supports hourly or daily ad appearance and also allows advertisers to adjust bid price by hourly or daily schedules.

Testing Results

A conservative approach to testing day parting is to start by limiting ads without an equal increase in 'on' time bid price or ad visibility. If advertising costs drop significantly, but ATOS and conversion remain stable, then we have a good case to channel saved budget into increased ad visibility.

If you don't want to wait, and can handle a possible spike in ad costs, then go ahead and boost ad visibility for the 'on' time to compensate for the 'off' time you set in the ad schedule. If dayparting does its job, you should see an increase in visitor quality with little or no increase in the average cost per visitor.

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