About New Broad Match Experiments

This article describes the new approach to Broad Match experiments in Google Ads. This new approach is aimed at delivering faster results and reducing some of the common experimentation errors, by diverting traffic and budget within the existing campaign (instead of creating a campaign copy for the experiment treatment arm).

Benefits

This new approach offers several advantages:

Faster results: By using a single campaign, you can get results and insights more quickly.
Minimal setup errors: With changes applied to both the control and treatment arms (since they are both within the same campaign), there are fewer potential chances of setup errors and sync issues.
Shorter learning period: This approach is likely to have a reduced learning period, since the traffic remains in the same campaign.

How it works

Search feature experiments are designed to enable advertisers to easily test key Search Ads features like Broad Match keywords.

Previously, running a Broad Match experiment involved creating a copy of your existing campaign. Now, the experiment will divert traffic and budget of your existing campaign evenly between the control group and the trial group.

Control: A % portion of your existing Search campaign with your original keywords.
Trial: The remaining % portion of your existing Search campaign with original keywords and Broad Match versions of those keywords.

Once an experiment is complete, advertisers can evaluate performance and choose if they want to “apply the experiment”, which adds Broad Match versions of their keywords to their campaigns.

Steps to implement

Through the Recommendations page

Go to Recommendations within the Campaigns menu.
Select View XX recommendations under the “Add broad match keywords” recommendation card.
Select the 3-dot icon beside the campaign that you want to use for this experiment.
Select Apply as an experiment.
In the “Create an experiment” pop up, select the start and end dates for the experiment under the “Date range” section.
Enter a name for the experiment under the “Experiment name” section.
Select Create experiment.

Through the Experiment page

Go to Experiments within the Campaigns menu
Under "All Experiments", in the recommended experiments section, select Create Experiment in the “Add Broad Match keywords” card.
In the “Create an experiment” pop up, select the start and end dates for the experiment under the “Date range” section.
Enter a name for the experiment under the “Experiment name” section.
Select Create experiment.

You can alternatively set up Broad Match experiments by selecting the on the Experiments page.

Click the plus button , and select Campaign features and settings.
Select Broad Match keywords for Search campaigns.

Note: You can continue to use Custom Experiments to set up Broad Match experiments, if you prefer or require an experimentation setup that leverages a distinct control and treatment campaign (through campaign copying).

Reporting

Experiment results can be found under the “Experiments” tab, with an expanded view of the “Experiment summary” page when you select the experiment campaign.

Applying the feature

You have 2 options to apply results:

When creating the experiment, there is an option to “Apply your experiment changes if results are favorable”. You can select this during setup if you want the experiment to automatically apply if the results are favorable at the end of the experiment.
After the experiment ends, you can select “Apply” from the Experiments table and add the Broad Match keywords to the campaign.

Differences between New Broad Match experiments and Broad Match experiments through Custom experiments

	New Broad Match Experiments	Custom Broad Match Experiments
Keyword setup	Automatic	Manual
Reporting surfaces	Experiments platform Keywords Page	Experiments platform Campaigns Page Reports via report editor Keywords Page
Ramp up time	Reduced ramp up time, therefore results can be obtained faster	Ramp up time could be needed for the trial campaign, therefore experiments might need to run longer

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?