October 9, 2015 · Phil Foriska

Dayparting in AdWords and BingAds

Since most businesses aren’t busy 24-7-365, getting in front of the customer at the right time is crucial. Though that seems obvious, there are plenty of businesses out there who are spending their online advertising dollars 24-7-365 with no regard for the days or times that are most profitable.
Luckily, Google AdWords and BingAds offer Ad Scheduling (a.k.a dayparting). Ad Scheduling allows PPC ads to only be run during set hours of the day or days of the week. This allows advertisers to choose what days and times their ads are shown based on their past performance.
In this article we’ll look at step-by-step instructions for Ad Scheduling in Adwords and BingAds.


Google AdWords Ad Scheduling

The first step to dayparting is finding the most profitable days and times for PPC ads. This could vary by product or service so it’s important to establish dayparting on a campaign level.
Let’s first look at the days of the week that see the best performance. To do this, select the Dimensions tab in your desired campaign.


Once you’re in the Dimensions section, use the “View” drop-down menu > select “Time” > “Day Of The Week”.


The next step is to analyze the data and find what days of the week see the best performance for your campaign. As you can see in the example below, this particular campaign gets the majority of its conversions Tuesday-Friday while the weekends and Mondays aren’t converting on the same level.

After you have determined which days of the week get the most conversions, it’s time to look at the hours of the day where your ads get the most action. Once again, you’ll be under the Dimensions tab, but this time select “View” > “Time” > “Hour of Day”.

The next step is to analyze which hours of the day are your top performing hours. In the example below you’ll see that this campaign sees most of its conversions between the hours of 9am and 9pm, while 10pm through 8am hours don’t get many conversions.

Now that you have determined which days of the week and which hours of the day convert best, it’s time to begin scheduling your ads to run during those time frames. To access the ad scheduling feature in AdWords, select the “Settings” tab for the desired campaign then select Ad Schedule.

To start scheduling, click the red “+ Ad Schedule” button.

Then click the “+ Create Custom Schedule” link

Next, Select the days of the week you want to schedule and the times that you would like to make adjustments on. and click Save.

Once you have saved the time frame, you’ll select the checkbox next to the time frame and click “Set bid adjustment”

From here you can choose to increase or decrease bids for the selected time frame. In this example we have selected the 9am-9pm hours where we see most of our conversions. In this case we would increase the bid to ensure a top position during those times. Conversely, you could select the hours where your campaign performs poorly and decrease the bid during those hours to prevent your ads from wasting budget.


It’s extremely important that you regularly monitor the performance of campaigns after dayparting has been implemented. Make sure you have baseline stats to compare against. Being able to compare stats before and after dayparting is crucial to determining whether your ad scheduling and bid changes have had positive and negative effects.


BingAds Ad Scheduling

Dayparting in BingAds is very similar to the Google process we just covered. The same principles should be followed in scheduling BingAds. Make sure you have a significant amount of data before you start ad scheduling so it’s possible to determine days and hours that perform well on a consistent basis. You also need to make sure you are creating a baseline before you schedule ads in Bing. Once you have enough data and a baseline report, the BingAds dayparting process can begin.
To start, you need to determine which days of the week the desired campaign performs best. To do this you’ll follow similar steps to what was done in Google.

First select the “Dimensions” tab.

Then choose “Time: Day Of Week” from the “Show:” dropdown.

Once you have the day of week stats up, choose a campaign to analyze.

Figure out which days of the week perform best for that particular campaign. You’ll then repeat this process, but change “Show: Time: Day of week” to “Show: Time: Hour of Day” and perform another analysis. While this particular example below doesn’t show a distinct trend, yours may be glaring. For the purposes of this article, let’s say that we saw the same trends we saw in Google and wanted to set our day parting accordingly.

Move over to the Settings tab in the BingAds interface. Under “Targeting Options” click the “Ad Schedule” link.

Here you will set bid adjustments based on the times you want to run the report. Keep in mind that you can choose to increase bids during top performing days and hours, or you can decrease bids during you poor performing days and hours. When you have set your bid adjustments you can then save your settings.
Just like with Google you’ll need to monitor your performance. Compare your data from before and after ad scheduling was enabled. If you see positive changes in performance you can further refine your days, hours and bid adjustments. If performance declines you may want to cancel your scheduling and try new bid adjustments. Be sure to make note of any seasonality that could affect performance.


Ad Scheduling or Day Parting can be a powerful tool in your PPC arsenal. It allows you to ensure that you’re in front of your customers at the days and times they’re most likely to convert. It can also prevent you from wasting money during times that your ads don’t typically convert. If you would like more information on day parting or PPC management, Contact TravelBoom Today!

Categories:
Share via
Copy link