Google’s New Dayparting Functionality: What You Need to Consider

Search engine marketing has clearly earned its stripes. Chief marketers are paying more attention to the tactic than ever, and when they attend their next search strategy meeting, they should ask their search team about Google’s new ad scheduling/dayparting feature and what the new function is doing for the search program.

Announced on June 16, the functionality is one of Google’s latest efforts to improve control and return for advertisers. The feature allows advertisers to “automatically adjust their bids or pause and resume their campaigns based on the time of day or day of week,” according to the announcement.

Managing any aspect of a search marketing program requires an understanding of the larger merchandising strategy at work, and choosing whether and how to employ dayparting is no exception. Chief marketers should keep these four dayparting considerations in mind when directing search teams.

1) Google’s functionality is new; dayparting strategy is not.
Many search programs already leverage dayparting and have for years. Atlas Search, other program management tools, and full-service agencies have helped marketers implement and manage this strategy in the past. So it’s quite possible Google’s news will have no impact whatsoever on your existing search campaign. Ask your SEM team if dayparting is already part of the program; if not, the new Google functionality may have something to offer.

2) Dayparting enables marketers to match time zones, target customers, and bid prices.
Consider the time of day that most users turn to a search engine: daytime and early evening hours. In the middle of the night, domestic traffic subsides, and overseas traffic picks up. International marketers will sometimes present different offers to different users by serving search ads at different times.

Many electronics manufacturers market products internationally. Some make products for both sides of the pond. Others, of course, don’t, and anyone who’s ever traveled to Europe with a laptop or other electric appliance knows that a 120-volt piece of equipment designed for the U.S. will not work overseas. This illustrates how dayparting can help you target the customers who can buy your products while avoiding those who cannot, as well as unnecessary search-click costs. If you don’t ship products overseas, you may be able to boost cost-effectiveness by turning off your search programs altogether or selectively turning off certain keywords in the wee hours of the night.

Once you understand your international merchandising strategies, you should study consumer search patterns for the types of products and services you offer. Search volume for office equipment and supplies, for example, will peak at different times and days than searches focusing on restaurants, movie show times, and other evening/weekend goods and services. A chain of movie theaters might realize substantial ROI improvements by targeting only evening and weekend searchers, reaching consumers more likely to buy soon and cutting out some of the morning searchers who might be thinking days ahead of time and less likely to actually go to the theater.

3) Dayparting can support many types of strategies.
Big-brand marketers use search for many purposes, from driving transactions and signing up newsletter readers to furthering their public relations goals, providing advocacy for a wide range of issues, and creating brand associations among target customers or other important audiences. No matter what goals your search marketing program seeks to accomplish, an effective dayparting strategy can help ensure that your search program targets the right message, to the right groups, in the right locations at the right times.

4) Consider Google a testing ground.
Search teams getting their first taste of dayparting through the new Google feature should consider it a testing ground. If a dayparting strategy creates new levels of cost-effectiveness and drives improvements in ROI through Google, a more comprehensive approach to dayparting might be the best course of action to leverage the same strategy across other engines. Automation tools or outsourced search teams can help you take advantage of dayparting’s ability to target by time zone not just with Google’s wealth of international traffic but also with Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, and a host of other engines.

Chief marketers overseeing search teams can help foster success with dayparting by ensuring that the search team understands the overall merchandising strategy and keeping these and other considerations in mind.

Mark Stephens is vice president/general manager of the central region for Seattle-based interactive services firm Avenue A | Razorfish. You can contact him at [email protected].