NEGATIVE KEYWORD CONFLICT REPORTS: INTRO

Every PPC junkie knows negative keywords can make or break a campaign.

Have the right negative keywords and click through rates (CTR) rise, cost per acquisition (CPA) drops, and cost per click (CPC) drops. Have the wrong negative keywords and best case scenario you’re not filtering out unqualified searches. The worst case scenario, you’ve totally screwed yourself by blocking important and relevant searches.

AdCenter has been reaching out to the PPC community lately and Negative Keyword Conflict Reports could be an olive branch of peace to a group of advertisers historically frustrated with AdCenter’s lack of features, usability issues, and lack of support.

Following is a short overview of Negative Keyword Conflict Reports.

Overview:

Adcenter’s Negative Keyword Conflict Report lets you compile a list of negative keywords that conflict with active keywords. Reports display the account, campaign, adgroup, keyword, negative keyword, and conflict level.

Conflict level refers to the account level where the positive keyword conflict is occurring, for example, campaign or adgroup. We’ve also seen numbers in this column when we’ve downloaded the report and are not sure what these are referring too.

Note: This report will still pull negative keyword conflicts from paused adgroups and campaigns if the keywords are still set to active. Be sure to select specific accounts, campaigns, and adgroups under “Report Scope” to avoid wasting time.

Report options and customization is limited to selecting entire accounts or selecting specific accounts, campaigns, or adgroups. There is no option to select a time range since the report is compiled based on the current negative and positive keywords.

The Good:

This is a fantastic tool unique to AdCenter. Reports run quickly and provide invaluable data.

· This report is especially useful for large and complicated accounts.

· If you are taking over a new AdCenter account that has been managed by another company this is a must run report.

· This is a great tool to audit an account before going it live.

· While Negative Conflict Reports are not quite as essential for smaller accounts it will still save a lot time combing through keywords.

The Bad

No Flexibility.

· When selecting “Report Scope” you are unable to sort campaigns and adgroups by active, paused, or deleted. This is an annoying time waster for large accounts.

· Only a limited number of report columns are available. Additional columns would be a welcome addition to Excel Jockeys.

· This is a report not a live tool.

What I’d Love to See

If this report option was a live and functioning tool I think I’d have to ask for Bill Gates forgiveness for all the awful things I’ve said about AdCenter in the past. If I could click, sort, edit, and bulk change this negative keyword conflict report information from AdCenter Desktop I think I’d even buy him lunch.

If I were nit picking, being able to sort by status when selecting specific accounts, campaigns, and adgroups would be a huge time saver for users managing large accounts.

Overall

This is a fantastic and time saving report. It’s a bit limited but it really is hard to complain about. However, like most things AdCenter, it could have been a homerun as a tool but ended up very useful as a report.

I’m excited to see some advanced tactics developed for this. Post your tips and tricks below!

Author: Mark Jensen

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