PPC and Weekends vs. Weekdays?

[JDE]

I have heard from several affiliate managers that they shut down their PPC campaigns on weekends, and start them up again on Monday.

I have run several Adwords and Yahoo campaigns, and cannot say that my conversions are lower on weekends. However, I have started some campaigns on Friday evenings, and canceled them prior to the end of the weekend because they were not converting. When I have run successful campaigns (profitable), I have not stopped them on weekends.

Any advice on this from any of you PPC experts out there!

Thanks

[Lucid]

I don't really see a reason to stop a campaign on weekends or even overnight as some do. People looking for you could be looking at any time, on any day. You certainly don't want to miss a sale because you were not advertising at that time.

I had some clients say "I'm not open after 6 pm". Yeah, but they still search. If they call, have an answering machine take it and call back. Or they will. If you don't show, they'll call a competitor.

Even if you sell online, they may search on weekends and buy a day or two later. Just this week I downloaded data to create a weekly report for a client on Monday morning. Checking a few hours later (after the report was sent), there were four more sales that happened to those clicking ads over the weekend.

At the start of a new campaign, don't stop it. Collect data. Look at it months later and see if you'd be better off stopping certain days. Better yet, certain times. However, the hourly data doesn't show conversions, only clicks. Still, less clicks means less missed sales and you will improve click rate which improves QS.

FYI, my data since 2009 among 31 clients shows a lower conversion rate for weekend clicks (about 15%) but higher click rate (about 12%) and slightly lower CPC meaning the ROI is only slightly worse. Your own mileage may vary.