Something that we may tend to ignore is checking on our Ad Extensions’ performance.

The reason for ignoring Ad Extensions may be that they aren’t considered an essential part of an AdWords campaign (although they most definitely are).

Here is how you can check on your Ad Extensions’ performance:

Access your AdWords account and click on the Ad Extensions tab:

Now you’ll see the list of Ad Extensions that are available (Location Extension, Call Extension, Sitelinks, Product Extensions, Social Extensions, and Mobile App Extensions). Choose the one of interest and then select the columns – which determines the metrics you are interested in revising:

Depending on what you determine your campaign goals to be, you will decide which of the metrics are most relevant.

Once you’ve selected the metrics of interest, you are also able to download the information in any of the following formats: Excel, .csv, .tsv,.pdf, .xml, and .gz.

Let’s now move on to checking on the geographic performance!

This one I consider to be very interesting because you can get a lot of information from this report that’s not widely-used by most advertisers.

Some of the information you can obtain from this report is key for you to have a more efficient ROI. Since you are able to match geographical locations to conversions, this allows you to identify geographical areas that have low profitability and then be able to exclude them.

Furthermore, by knowing the performance of each geographical area, you can start to focus budget and marketing efforts in geographical locations where you’re seeing the most results.

In order to generate the geographical performance report in AdWords, you need to click on the “Dimensions” tab. Afterwards click on “View” and select “Geographic” and you can of course then sort the columns by metrics of interest.

Here is how you get there:

Keyword performance, similar to the engine of your car, is what makes your AdWords campaign run. This part of your AdWords campaign especially should receive regular checkups.

Being able to automate AdWords keyword reports and choose to receive them at different time intervals can prove very valuable. This is just the same as changing your engine’s oil by pulling into a gas station every 10 times you stop for gas.

Here you can check on the keyword’s performance by match type as well as Quality Score trends. Of course, the usual suspects are accessible as well.

• CTR

• Clicks

• Conversions (Important)

• Cost-per-Conversion (Important)

• Conversion Rate

Click on the Keywords tab. Again, you can choose to be at account, campaign, or ad group level.

Please look at the example below:

I believe this report to be the cousin of the Geographic Performance Report. It’s not a very commonly-used report, but it can be very helpful.

You can use the Time Periods Report to identify periods of time with a more efficient ROI (e.g. better performing hours of the day or better performing days of the week). This way, you can schedule your bids to be lower when you find it pertinent.

For instance, if you find out that for some reason Clients don’t tend to convert on a Friday, or that from 1:00am through 7:00am you generate many impressions but that’s about it, it could be negatively affecting your CTR.

When you identify such cases, you can go to your campaign settings afterward and set ad scheduling at your convenience.

To generate this report, you need to go to the Dimensions tab, and in View, select the time frame you are interested in revising. Here is an example:

Note on Acting Upon Time Period Reports in AdWords

Pay very close attention to your performance in the weeks after acting on your AdWords Time Period Report. Even though you may not be generating as many sales from 8am to 4pm, it doesn’t mean that these clicks are completely worthless.

These clicks might be from searchers in the early research phase of the buying funnel, or they may be those who don’t want to buy the product while at work but don’t mind doing the research part of this phase.

Especially if your product is a bit more complex and therefore takes more time from the initial click to the final purchase, you should be very careful about the Time Period Report.

Quality Score performance is a metric of tremendous importance. The degree to which you understand your Quality Score, will directly relate to how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing pages are to a person viewing your ad.

Quality Score is part of the ad rank formula (your ad rank is the value determining your ad position on any given search).

A better AdWords Quality Score will also help save money because when you increase Quality Score, you can start lowering your bids without affecting your ad position.

If you manage to do this, you would be getting more clicks for the same amount of money, which in the end can result in more conversions without incurring in any additional spend.