Tip #1 Disabling Advert Optimisation

Disable the automatic advert optimisation feature (set in your campaign settings) to avoid giving away valuable IP to your competitors.

Visit the following hyperlink for an example:

http://www.pdqprospects.com/AdwordsOptimisationScreenshot.html

Why would you want to do this?

Ok - Lets say you are diligently testing 2 adverts side by side within an ad-group
(as you should always be btw).

With optimisation turned on, eventually 1 advert will be deemed the leader and shown more.

For arguments sake we will take the keyword branding. Your competitor has 2 split tested Google Adwords adverts which will show (in a round robin manner) whenever this keyword is searched for.

You may find out useful understanding regarding which of the adverts is performing better by searching for the keyword selling , noting the ad results and refreshing the search results.

Because you get to understand the best copy
Suppose you do this 4 times (by reloading your webpage) - and 3 times advert 1 is shown, but advert 2 is shown once - you now know which of these adverts is the best.

Knowing what adverts are working for your competitors allows you to beginning to understand the mindset of your potential potential buyers (whats working and whats not to encourage click-throughs).

This of course is very valuable intelligence to have for you to construct your own adverts - which means you might ultimately have higher click through rates and as a direct result pay less.

Because ads in Adwords are in the public domain, your selling efforts could be gleaned by your competitors and vice versa if you utilize the automatic optimisation feature.

You have the choice to set and forget letting Adwords do its job but if you want total control and are in a advertise that is highly competitive, you can want to manage your campaigns in a more hands-on fashion.

There is a trade-off for sure but its up to you as a business owner to contruct that decision based on your own risk management criteria.

In promoting there is only one genius - your customer.

You may always hire someone to create sizeably good ads but you have no guarantees they will produce a winner straight off the bat.

Only putting the ad into the wild will you determine results.

Sidebar

You may peak in terms of achieving as high a CTR as you may for a particular advert and this could mean you get lazy and only show the winner all the instant. To help keep your competitors guessing you should continually try new ads intermittently though.

Indeed therein lies some very valuable self help tips when it comes to keeping the competitors guessing:

Believe it or not you may want to put a worse advert up to reduce your CTR thus dropping you down the adwords advert list to help improve your ROI!

Recommendation

You are best using advertisement optimisation for most of your terms - set it, fail to remember it. Some can need to be broken out into their own campaigns to give you the granularity you require. Its a question of finding out which keywords warrant the excess effort.