Best Time to Run Google Ads with Time Targeting in Google Ads

It isn’t possible to have all your ads receiving the same amount of clicks all the time. If you’re running an ad campaign for a local business, it’s likely the majority of your traffic comes during peak times specific to the time-zone you’re targeting.

This is the key to time targeting:

You must make sure you’re targeting your ads to audiences when they’re awake and receptive of your messaging.

In this article, we’ll learn all about time targeting in Google Ads, helping you make the most of your time in advertising.

What is Time Targeting?

Time targeting, or in other words, dayparting, is a form of targeting where advertisers schedule their paid ads to reach the right audience during a defined time period or day of the week.

After you’ve created your pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, the default setting on Google Ads will display your ads all day. However, this isn’t optimized for engagement or clicks since your ad will likely be showing during times your prospects are unavailable.

The new Google Ads format allows you to set your time targeting as follows:

• Targeting by specific times of the day or by days of the week — For example, you may decide only to display your ads between 10 am and 1 pm, on weekdays.
• By adjusting keyword bids during specific time periods — This way, you can optimize your budget by increasing or decreasing your keyword bids during certain times of the day, depending on when your audience is active.

Time targeting displays your ads during periods when the most amount of customers are searching online. Alternatively, you can use time targeting to target customers during regular business hours when your service center or office is available to deal with any customer queries.

This strategy ensures your ads are shown to a higher number of relevant users, which in turn, leads to an increase in click through rate (CTR).

In the long-term, this will result in a reduced cost-per-click (CPC), and a higher overall return on investment (ROI).

Let’s dive deeper into this strategy to discover how you can make the most out of it.

5 Reasons to Use Time Targeting

Google Ads allows for a high level of customization. Here are five reasons why you should consider using time targeting in your PPC campaign.

1. Control When to Trigger Ads

Over time, campaigns develop certain conversion and performance trends for specific hours of the day, and days of the week. A crucial step in creating a custom advertising schedule is to analyze your campaigns performance data.

By studying this data, you can see how it differs across your campaign depending on the budget, keywords, ad copy, and geo-targeting options that have been set.

PPC advertising can get expensive, especially if you don’t monitor results and take account of data insights. With time targeting, you can ensure your budget doesn’t get drained quickly, as you have the ability to trigger your ads when they are more likely to generate a return.

2. Increased Ad Visibility for a Relevant Audience

When you’re using paid advertising, it’s crucial to serve ads to the proper audience — people who are more likely to purchase the offer.

To achieve this, you can use ad scheduling to make sure your ads are shown at the time of day your audience is available and active online. Make sure to adjust your bids to maximize ad visibility during these specific times.

3. Boost Local Businesses

Local businesses are the ones that can benefit a lot from ad scheduling. Advertisers can choose to show their ads only during opening hours. Scheduling your ads according to your store’s working hours can have a significant impact on driving in-store traffic.

Align your time targeting to advertise during business hours, analyze the peak times and days, and then adjust your bids to invest more during those times.

4. Schedule Ads during High Converting Days

With careful analysis of your campaign data, you can identify days and time periods that have a higher conversion rate. This gives you the knowledge you need to make smarter decisions about when to display your ads.

To check this information:

• Go into the Google Ads interface.
• Navigate to the Dimensions
• Hover the cursor above Time, and then click on Day of the Week.

5. Target Audiences in Specific Time-Zones

Ad scheduling is especially valuable for advertisers with campaigns in different time-zones. Certain days of the week and hours of the day will perform better in different geographical areas, and with these insights, you can determine the most effective times to show your ads.

How to Set up Ad Scheduling

So, let’s see how you can start using time targeting in Google Ads. Just follow the steps below to begin scheduling your ads for a better ROI.

To start, sign into your Google Ads account.

1. Select “Ad schedule” on the menu on the left-hand side of the page.
2. Click the Edit icon.
3. From the list, select the campaign on which you wish to enable Ad Scheduling.
4. Select the specific days and times you want to target.
5. Click Save.

That’s it! Now, you’re ready to hone in on those golden periods.

3 Tips for Better Time Targeting

After you have things configured, can’t just sit back and wait for profits to roll in. Google Ads doesn’t work like that — you must be proactive! Here are a few techniques to experiment with to get the best use of Ad scheduling in Google Ads:

1. Time of Day Bid Adjustments

Evaluate your campaign data to determine the hours of the day that you get the most acquisitions. Consider increasing your keyword bids around these times to improve your Ad Rank.

2. Day of Week Bid Adjustments

If your conversion rate is higher on the weekend, think about shifting your budget around. By reducing bids on quiet days, and bidding more on high-converting days, you can maximize the use of your budget and minimize wasted spend.

3. Call-only Campaigns

You may have a business that could benefit from Google’s Call-Only Campaign option. Instead of your ad linking to a website or landing page, it has an option that allows users to call your business.

This is great for targeting mobile users, and you can use time targeting to ensure your ad reaches prospects when they are most likely to call.

Timing is Crucial in Advertising

You may think that Ad scheduling is something you simply set and forget. However, if you take a more hands-on approach to data analysis and monitoring, you will be able to determine the peak times and best days to show your ads.

Over time, these insights will help you optimize your PPC budget, and maximize your advertising ROI. To get moving in the right direction with time targeting, check out the interactive PPC reports from PPCexpo. Soon enough, you will be able to show the right ad, to the right person, at the right time.