Short reprieve: Google gives accelerated ad delivery an extension

The accelerated ad delivery option in Google Ads will be available for a little bit longer, Google announced Wednesday. The end was supposed to come by October 1, as the warning in the screenshot below indicates, but now the option will sunset starting October 7. Campaigns will be switched over automatically.

Why we should care

If you missed the news last month, Google said it will be removing the accelerated ad delivery option from Google Ads campaigns. Standard delivery will be the one and only option.

The primary reason most advertisers selected accelerated delivery wasn’t to spend as much budget as possible, it was to show ads for as many relevant queries as possible — to maximize impressions and click volume potential. If your budget was unrestricted, the idea was you’d be able to show for as many queries as possible throughout the entire day and not have Google’s systems decide when and if to show your ads based on any number of signals. Now, Google says, that was a bad strategy.

In what turned out to be a writing-on-the-wall column on this site, Google’s Matt Lawson, VP of ads marketing, warned advertisers this July that accelerated delivery was likely not producing desired results: “In fact, standard delivery is more likely to get more clicks (and conversions) for you.”

As we wrote when the news first broke, the removal of accelerated delivery is another move toward letting the machines determine how campaign get optimized. Rather than prioritizing ad delivery at the start of the day regardless of potential click outcomes with accelerated delivery, Google says its bidding systems can better predict the optimal time to serve your ads throughout the day.

More on the news

• In the initial announcement, Google said the prediction modeling to determine the best times to serve your ad has been improved in standard delivery: “Standard delivery takes into account expected ad performance throughout the day and is better at maximizing performance within your daily budget.”
• Google recommends using its maximize conversions, conversion value or clicks smart bidding strategies for campaigns that have been set to accelerated delivery. Those strategies aim to spend your entire daily budget, which is what Google presumes your goal was in choosing accelerated delivery. Look at what those campaigns have actually been spending before just switching over to one of those strategies at their current budgets.
• You can use ad scheduling and bid adjustments to control your bidding strategy throughout the day. Keep in mind, ad scheduling is based on your time zone.