Starting September 17, Google Ads will remove the Accelerated Delivery option for Search campaigns, Shopping campaigns, and shared budgets. Campaigns that were using the accelerated option will be switched over to Standard Delivery.
If by October 1st, your campaigns are still set to use Accelerated Delivery, then Google will automatically switch over to standard delivery. However, Accelerated delivery will still be available for Display campaigns and Video campaigns.
What’s the Reasoning?
According to Google, “We are making this update in order to simplify & improve the budget options that we offer to customers. While customers have historically used Accelerated delivery to exhaust budgets rapidly, the setting has also created challenges. For example, Accelerated delivery has no impact when campaigns aren’t limited by budget, can lead to increased CPCs for campaigns limited by budget that see higher competition early in the day, and can have unintended geographic effects with earlier time zones receiving increased traffic.”
What Next?
While this new development is sure to create a pain point in your campaigns, the intention behind this change is to help make your campaigns more cost-effective. The school of thought among most advertisers is to opt for accelerated delivery to drive as many conversions as possible, spending as much as possible as long as it fit within their daily budget. This strategy is flawed and inefficient if you have a capped daily budget which can lead to your ads no longer serving by mid-day.
Google recommends switching to Standard delivery by going to your campaign settings page and changing your budget delivery setting. With Standard ad delivery, your budget is paced throughout the day or the periods of time you’ve scheduled your ads to run.
Other recommendations include:
- Choosing the maximize conversions or maximize clicks bidding strategies to indicate your performance priority for campaigns that had been using accelerated delivery.
- Use ad scheduling to manage when your ads are shown and bid adjustments to increase and decrease bids during certain times of day.
Brian Roizen is the Cofounder and Chief Architect of Feedonomics, a full-service feed optimization platform that optimizes product data for hundreds of channels. He has been featured on numerous podcasts and eCommerce webinars, and regularly contributes to Search Engine Land and other industry-leading blogs. Brian graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
