Here are a few tips for advertisers to ensure that their ad A/B testing efforts are successful when using AdOptics.
Test One Ad Element At a Time
Ad testing involves putting different versions of an ad in place to see which one works better. When you find a winning ad you can build on that success by creating more tests to refine your ad messaging and performance. One vital aspect to this process is to change only one ad element at a time. That is, change one headline, one description, or one url snippet at a time rather than changing multiple ad elements in a single test. There will be time later to test all of your desired experiments, but it is vital to test only one at a time to ensure that you can clearly identify the change in the ad that had the performance impact.
For example, if you run an ad test and change a single headline value from the original ad you have running, you will clearly be able to see which ad performed better based only on that single change. Then, after you complete that test, you can choose the winner and change another ad element to refine the performance benefit.
Conversely, if you changed three ad headlines in an ad test and that ad performed better, then you would not know which of the changes you made resulted in the performance benefit.
Test All Ad Elements to See What Concept Direction Works Best
There is an exception to the above rule of testing only one ad element at a time. It typically takes place when you are just starting a new ad campaign, or when you have been running a campaign with multiple ad iterations without the needed performance level. In these two situations, it makes sense to test entirely new ad concept directions.
A new ad concept would look very little to your existing ad, having multiple changes in the ad elements with different language, keywords, and calls to action. Making large scale changes in an ad and running an ad test is a great way to compare a baseline of your ad concepts. Testing largely different ad concepts will let you begin to narrow down a direction for you to hone your testing in on.
When testing a new ad concept against an established ad that has had multiple cycles of testing in place, it is important not to compare the performance metrics of the new concept too strictly against the established had that has had several rounds of refinement applied to it. It can even be useful to compare the performance of the new ad concept to the original ad's first iteration performance metric as a more accurate comparison.
This new concept approach can be useful even for the most establish ad groups to see if there is a new perspective approach to take which can revitalize a stagnant ad group.