Google seems to be offering beta testing of a new AdWords budgeting feature called “Timeframe,” which allows users to choose between monthly and daily budgeting.
Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable says the beta testing has been confirmed, and points to a WebmasterWorld thread that includes a response from an official Google representative:
ppcbuyers: I noticed a new feature under Budget Options for “Timeframe”, but only see it available in one client account – anyone else?
Monthly: Adjust daily budget based on traffic to reach a budget of $XX,#*$! per calendar month.
Daily: Limit the carryover of your unused budget from low-traffic days. This can reduce your potential traffic for the month.
AdWordsAdvisor (Google Rep): Sounds as if the one account has been made a part of a limited beta test, ppcbuyers. Not much I can add beyond that. 🙂
Google has a page up explaining monthly budgets and the differences between monthly and daily ones.
“With a daily budget, lower traffic days may mean that your ads receive fewer impressions and have some budget leftover. We don’t use this leftover budget, but we do attempt to compensate for the loss in traffic by serving impressions up to 20% over the daily budget on high traffic days. However, some high traffic days require budget flexibility beyond this amount,” says Google.
“With a monthly budget, we’ll adjust your budget automatically each day to meet traffic demand while still respecting your budget for the calendar month. For example, if your ads often receive less traffic on non-business days during a month, we’ll apply your unused budget to remaining business days to take traffic fluctuations into account.”
It is unclear how many people actually have access to the Timeframe feature so far. I would imagine that the feature will be quite welcome by advertisers nevertheless.
