AdWords’ Accelerated Delivery Explained

When it comes to feedback on our blog posts, among the most frequent – and also most appreciated – things we hear from our wonderful readers (a.k.a. YOU!) is that we have a way of explaining complex or technical subjects in an easy, business-friendly manner.

Well, today we’d like to continue this tradition of demystifying and unravelling important concepts by shining the spotlight on something that has plenty of people confused: Google AdWords’ accelerated delivery.

What is Accelerated Delivery?

Accelerated delivery is a setting within the AdWords platform that, if selected, allows advertisers to push out their ads as quickly as possible.

The alternative to this – and also the default setting in AdWords – is standard delivery, which allows advertisers to stagger their ads throughout the day and night.

Note, too, that accelerated delivery is not the same thing as Google’s recently-rolled out accelerated mobile pages for ads. The latter is about how quickly ads appear on mobile devices (i.e. rendering ads faster without using up additional memory and CPU resources). To learn more about this, check out this TechCrunch.com article.

Why is Accelerated Delivery Causing So Much Confusion?

First of all, there’s nothing inherently wrong with accelerated delivery, and in a moment we’ll highlight why and how choosing this option can make sense.

Before we get to that, however, it’s important to look at why accelerated delivery is causing so much confusion and, in some cases, blocking advertisers from reaching potential customers.

Here’s the thing: as noted above, accelerated delivery will push out ads as quickly as possible. But what happens if the keywords that trigger those ads have a high search volume, and the overall daily budget is low? Yup, you guessed it: the ads will stop showing until the next day!

Unfortunately for some advertisers, this is NOT what they want. Take for example a company that provides technology solutions to colleges and universities. Based on their research, they know that the optimal time when their target audience is on Google looking for technology solution is between 4-5pm from Monday through Friday.

If this company chooses accelerated delivery and the above-noted conditions are met (i.e. relatively costly keywords and relatively low budget), then their ads will likely stop showing well before 4:00pm. They might even stop before noon!

In such cases, there are basically two solutions:

Switch to standard delivery, and have AdWords automatically pause the ads throughout the day (i.e. not show them) so that the budget doesn’t get exhausted, and the ads don’t stop. Obviously this isn’t ideal, because it means that some potential customers won’t see the ad. But for the majority of advertisers, having their ad on rotation throughout the day is a wise trade-off.

Boost the daily budget, so that it takes longer to exhaust the budget, which means the ads will stay in rotation for longer – and possibly the whole day.

What’s Good About Accelerated Delivery?

Accelerated delivery makes sense when advertisers want to ensure (or at least greatly increase the possibility) that their full daily budget will be used, and their ad will therefore be shown much more often than with standard delivery.

What’s more, accelerated delivery can be an excellent tactic for getting a top position with a limited budget. Of course this means that the budget will likely reach $0 quickly, but for some advertisers it’s worth it. To maximize ROI, they’d rather have their ad show up 10 times in position #1 or #2, than 50 times in position #5 or #6.

Learn More

At Leap Clixx, we develop, manage and optimize our customers’ AdWords campaigns – including many that take advantage of the accelerated delivery option. To learn more, contact us today. Your consultation with us is free!

For more great information and to learn why AdWords should be incorporated with your marketing efforts, download this FREE eBook “Why Google AdWords Should Be Part of Your Inbound Marketing Strategy“: