I would like to learn how to write my own adword scripts. Any suggestions of what course to take to learn google script sintaxis?

It all depends on whether they are all selling the same thing to the same persona. If yes, then combine all the campaigns into one adwords account, which feeds into one analytics account. That way they can get feedback on the effectiveness of different keywords, ads, etc. more quickly (because there will be more data, from all the different websites, all in one place, for a particular keyword). If they are each selling different things, or to different personas, then don't combine their accounts, because it will just make things confusing and not useful from an analysis perspective.

I've done a lot of complex analytics installations, usually cross-domain and including AdWords and manual tagging with conversion tracking of ecommerce transactions. The gclid by default will override the manual UTM values in Analytics so that is what you are looking for. If you are just grabbing the manual tags from the URL for your own purpose, this should be OK. However, if you at some point want to import conversions (say) connected to your manual tag, then you would want to enable UTM overriding the gclid: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033981?hl=en. Do you have AdWords and Analytics accounts linked? Where and how are you tracking commerce conversions, if you are? Do you feel you are getting the insights you need from your current custom reporting? Let me know if I can help with a call about those or further optimization of your analytics capture. Best - Michael

Being a Google Partner has many benefits, but they revise them all the time. Google seems to protect their intellectual property heavy, so as a partner, you can display their partnership logo to your potential clients. Also, when they roll out new products in beta, you know before the public does. As Google products go, that's a huge benefit. They provide enhanced support when you need it as well. I also do a lot of public speaking, so the one benefit public speakers enjoy is that they let you speak at their events; a very valuable benefit to us public speakers ;) I hope this answers the question. Bruce

I know you've already decided to use a bid management platform. However, I'd like to share with you my experiences. As an SEM agency managing $30 million+/year, we've invested tens of thousands of dollars into streamlining our work effort with a bid management platform. We've specifically used Marin & Click Equations (now owned by Acquisio). We also consistently demo the bid management platforms to see if there's anything eye opening for us. 1) We've always had an implementation challenge. Installing each one across multiple clients has been a pain. If you're just running it for your company - then it's a lot better. 2) Crappy Bid Algorithm's - they always (used to) try to pitch you on how sexy their bid management algorithms are. We had a client who came to us already on Marin, and we found that their bid algorithm consistently sucked. Honestly, bid management isn't rocket science, and once you have an equilibrium, it doesn't need to be changed much. 3) Google doesn't consistently update their API - many of the beta features that power users use aren't available via the API immediately, so the bid management platforms can't take that data in. We liked Click Equations years ago, because they were the only platform at the time that imported Quality score, and created alerts and reporting for you, even though it wasn't avaiable via API. These days, things like the Google Business Data center, Adwords Scripts & Labels etc. aren't available via the standard API, and therefore none of the platforms deal with it. 4) These platforms are ONLY good for reporting - I sat at a Google roundtable of 10 top SMB SEM agencies ($25 - $100 million/year in managed spend), and I asked them "do any of you use Bid Management platforms?". Only ONE of the ten said they use a bid management platform, and at that, only for reporting. 5) The real things Bid Management solutions should be doing - The real thing that bid management platforms should be focusing is automating the things that count (e.g. split testing ads), and they don't. You can however, find other vendors (e.g. Brad Geddes's Adalysis.com) that do ad testing in an effective manner. If you have further questions, please feel free to give me a ring.

In my experience, starting out testing one against the other is ideal (i.e. running campaigns on each and seeing which performs better). It's also important to look at what your immediate and long term goals are for the spend. Are you trying to sell them something now, keep them engaged for a later release of a product, or some other action? The key thing to note is that depending on what you're selling and what your keywords are, the bar can be a lot lower in terms of your bid per click if you go with Facebook Ads. Additionally: you can hyper target your audience with Facebook Ads like whoa (Google Ads are more limiting). Ex: I ran both sets of ads for a new line of ballet inspired barre-wear (targetting both ballet dancers and barre students). Both Facebook and Google Ads were linked to the sales page. For Google Ads: I used keywords like "barre-wear" (low search volume) "ballet attire" "activewear" (limited relevance) and about 20 other related terms. The spend to results ratio here was underwhelming. Keep in mind: I've only been working with Google Ads for a couple of years now. Better results are possible if you've got someone with 5+ years of experience who knows the system backwards and forwards, but for the most part, Google Ads are not DIY friendly if you want serious results. For Facebook Ads, I did 2 campaigns: 1. Ballet Dancers: I targetted women in major cities (NY, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles), who were under 26 and fans of ballet companies and schools in their city, and also those who were fans of major dance supply companies. 2. Barre Students: I targetted women nationwide who were between 26 and 52, married, above average household income, fans of barre studios in their area, fans of Lululemon Athletica (high end activewear brand), and did a couple of variations on different hobbies and activities to target specifically stay at home moms or wives who were active. The results: $100 in ad spend // over 150 clicks to the product page // 20 new email newsletter signups // 3 immediate sales // 2 follow up sales within that week (so for a $100 product the ad yielded about $500 in sales that week from individuals who could be potential customers again (and 20 new people to market to for future sales).