A powerful but often overlooked tool to optimizing any Google Ads campaign is to adjust a campaigns Ad Schedule to correspond with the most productive days of the week and hours of day. Lets explore how to find the data and adjust your campaign to maximize the most productive hours and day:

New Campaigns:

For a new campaign with no data, the general rule of thumb is to display ads during the hours of operation. For local businesses this would be the hours that a store is open, or during normal business hours of 9 am - 5 pm, Monday through Friday. If you are looking for a direct response for your campaign such as a phone call, the hours that you are able to answer the phone or quickly return a phone call is where to start with Ad Scheduling.

eCommerce Websites:

eCommerce sites that can take orders around the clock would want to start with an Ad Schedule of all days and hours initially and adjust as data is reported.

Mature Campaigns:

For campaigns that have matured for at least 30 days reviewing the Day of Week and Hour of Day Dimension in the Google Ads Interface will provide the valuable data you need to optimize Ad Scheduling. At minimum you would want to have at least 30 days worth of data, but for these dimensions, 90 days (or more) would be better to determine consistent trends. With the Hour of Day and Day of Week data you will see which times get the most Impressions, Clicks and Conversions but also which days and hours are under performing.

Adjusting your campaigns Ad Scheduling to maximize the most productive days and hours while minimizing those that do not perform as well will be a combination of determining if your ads should display at all during certain times and adjusting campaign level bid modifier to increase and/or decrease bids as necessary will help you sculpt Impressions working towards improving Quality Score, get the most out the more productive times and help control spend by minimizing less productive times.