Chapter 9 : Creating Effective Ad Groups part 7

Complying with Google’s
need for relevance
Throughout this book, I talk about Google’s obsessive enforcement of relevance
on its pages. The AdWords program doesn’t hold to lower standards.
You might not realize it because of the smooth automation with which the
Control Center operates, but every ad in the system is cleared by a human.
These gatekeepers check stylistic considerations, but simple relevance is
equally important. Don’t attempt to blanket Google with irrelevant ads. Google
will probably stop you — and their prevention would save you time, because
nobody would click on irrelevant ads.
The quality of ads on a search results page is as important to Google as the
quality of its editorial search results. It is all content to Google, content that
is judged and responded to by people searching the index. Google doesn’t
want anything on the page that fails to meet its standard of relevance.

The gray area of trademark infringement
The standard of relevance for which Google is renowned is tested painfully
by some companies for allowing competing companies to place ads on their
search pages. By “their” search pages, I mean pages answering search queries
about that company. The complaining companies claim that their trademarks
are violated, a claim implying that the company thinks it owns the search
results page.
Perhaps the most celebrated trademark case involved an environmental organization
that ran AdWords ads critical of a cruise company, and associated
those ads with keywords related to the cruise company. On the surface, this
tactic might seem no less sporting than attack-and-response ad campaigns,
common in political advertising. Political opponents might hate each other,
but they don’t claim trademark infringement when the ads get dirty.
The problem on Google arises in the very concept of relevance. Everyone
wants Google’s search pages, including the ads, to express a high level of relevance.
When an advertiser reaches across competitive lines to appropriate
a keyword normally associated with a rival, the rival can charge that the relevancy
of “its” results page has been compromised, and the users of that page
(the searchers) have been betrayed. Google is responsive to such arguments,
or at least cautious enough in the early days of this new type of dispute, to
generally accede to requests for editorial control of the situation. In the example
just mentioned, the environmental organization’s ads were taken down
within a day.
The lesson for advertisers is simple: Don’t make obvious crossovers into competitive
territory to plug your products. That goes for affiliate advertisers,
selling other companies’ stuff. You can see this caution played out on Google’s
search pages. Search for a well-known company, and you rarely see its competitors’
ads. If you do, you never see those ads mentioning the competing

company by name.

Using keyword-matching options
Google provides four ways to treat your keywords so that it interprets them
exactly the way you want. These treatments, called matching options, are similar
to the search operators used on the front end of Google. (You might want to
refer to Google For Dummies for a complete discussion of search operators.)
One of those search operators — the quote operator — is the same as one of
the keyword-matching operators discussed here.

The four keyword-matching options at your disposal are
 Broad matching
 Negative keywords
 Phrase matching
 Exact matching
Keyword matching is powerful stuff and sometimes ignored by advertisers. In
the rush to launch a campaign, it’s tempting to throw in untreated keywords
(which default to the broad matching option) and let them ride. Slowed
accounts and disabled keywords are often the result of such carelessness.
Read on to find out about these four important options.
Broad matching
Do nothing, and your keyword is broadly matched to a potentially huge array
of related keywords. Your ad might be displayed on search results pages for
variations of your keyword, misspellings of your keyword, or conceptual similarities
to your keyword. Broad matching is convenient, because you let Google
do the work of researching keywords. With a single word, you cover a lot of
search queries.
On the other hand, broad matches might not work for your ad, and Google is
the sole determinant of broad matching if you don’t balance a broad match
with a negative keyword (see the next section).
Broad matching is risky, and most experienced advertisers use it cautiously.
If a broadly matched keyword is disabled by Google (a common occurrence),
you may put it back in play with a different matching option. Narrowing the
effect with phrase or exact matching often makes a sputtering keyword suddenly
potent.
Negative keywords
Placing a minus sign (hyphen) immediately before a keyword excludes that
keyword from matching your keyword and triggering an ad impression. Negative
matching looks like this:
-keyword
Google recently introduced a valuable feature that assigns negative matches
to the entire campaign — every Ad Group. The Campaign page contains an
Add link for creating a campaign-wide list of negative keywords. That link
becomes a View/edit link after you add at least one negative keyword.
Figure 9-12 illustrates the screen on which you create the negative word list
for the entire campaign. Note the Clean Sweep feature on the right, which lets
you extract negative keywords individually embedded in Ad Groups and reassign
them to the entire campaign.
Phrase matching
Phrase matching uses quotation marks around a key phrase, like this:
“coin trading”
The quotes force Google to match your keyword to queries in which the
quote-enclosed words appear exactly as spelled and as ordered. Google still
broad-matches the phrase to related words and concepts but keeps the
quoted phrase intact. Don’t use phrase matching on a single word.
Exact matching
Putting brackets around a key phrase is the most restrictive treatment. Exact
matching looks like this:

[coin trading]

Chapter 9 : Creating Effective Ad Groups part 6

Using the Keyword Suggestion Tool
The most dangerous keyword strategy is one that’s too broad. Broad keywords
are usually thoughtless keywords, and Google advertising punishes lazy marketing.
The danger is not even so much that you lose money deploying overly
general keywords; worse, you lose time. You probably can’t get the clicks you
need with wide, fuzzy targeting, yet you’ll accrue an enormous number of
impressions before you can make a cup of coffee. Then Google will shut you
down before your statistics have even arrived in your Control Center.
Targeted relevance is the key. The more precise your targeting — which is to
say, the more precisely your ad’s keyword matches both your ad copy and the
searcher’s keyword — the more magnetic your ad. One way to find out what
your potential customers are searching for is to ask Google. The Keyword
Suggestion Tool is Google’s way of answering your question.
The Keyword Suggestion Tool is no more than three clicks away from anywhere
in the Control Center:
1. Click the Campaign Management tab.
2. Click Tools.
3. Click Keyword Suggestion Tool.
The Keyword Suggestion tool is designed to spit out search terms related
(in varying degrees) to one or more keywords you entered. The best results
come from not mixing and matching unconnected keywords, though Google
allows any combination.
Google delivers three lists of keyword suggestions, though the organization is
a little confusing:
 On the left side of the page, under More Specific Keywords, is a list of
words and phrases matching your entry — most are phrases. These are
broad matches that might trigger any ads associated with the keyword
you entered, if that keyword is set on broad matching. (I cover keyword
matching later in this chapter.) In the example of Figure 9-11, the list of
phrases would probably trigger any ad associated with the mp3 keyword.
That popular keyword is too broad for most advertisers, but the more
specific key phrases might not be. Of course, you need to choose relevant
items from the list.
 On the right side of the page, under Similar Keywords, are two lists. The
top list consists of expanded broad matches to the keyword you entered.
Any keyword in this list would trigger your ads if your keyword were set
on broad matching. The Similar Keywords list is not as related to your
keywords as the More Specific Keywords list.
174 Part II: Creating and Managing an AdWords Campaign
 Also on the right side of the page but further down are more suggested
keywords, but these don’t trigger ads associated with the keyword you
entered. I often find that these words are the most useful. This list is
where Google’s contextual intelligence shines in the Keyword Suggestion
Tool. The best new, yet related, ideas are in this list. Most of the keywords
and phrases here do not include the keyword you entered but are related
in concept. This type of relationship is extremely valuable and sometimes
difficult to invent without assistance. And, because Google gets its ideas
from its immense database of search terms that people have entered,
you know these are viable search queries.

You must find your own specific terms that match your product or service, of
course. But to get on the same page (literally) as your potential customers,
who are trying their best to find you, consider exercising your mind with
these thought inversions:
 Solution versus problem. As an expert in your field, you think in terms
of solutions. But a customer’s mind is filled with the problem. Searchers
commonly express their queries as questions, not answers; problems,
not solutions. So although your impulse might be to advertise on the
keyword landscape grade repair, your customers are probably running to
Google with queries like how do I stop my basement from flooding. There’s
not a search engine in the world that expects its users to enter solutions
and answers in the search box. You shouldn’t expect it, either. Build keyword
lists not just around your products, but also around the questions
that will lead to your products as answers.
 Knowledgeable versus naive. Assume that your potential customers
are naive about the terms that define your industry. We all tend to think
everyone knows what we know. When you brainstorm for keywords,
dedicate some keyword lists to avoiding buzzwords and industry “in”
phrases. You might fill some Ad Groups with keywords such as home
improvement contractor, landscaping materials, and retaining walls. But
don’t neglect other keyword opportunities to reach potential naive customers
who might be searching for healthy grass, golf green in back yard,
and fixing dog damage.
 Using versus discovering. You use your product or service, and you no
doubt get repeat business. But a certain percentage of your customers
are brand new. When attracting these people, don’t assume that they
176 Part II: Creating and Managing an AdWords Campaign
Breaking the addiction to keyword generators
Much fuss is made in the CPC-advertising world
about keyword generators and suggestion tools.
In this book I promote not only Google’s Keyword
Suggestion Tool, but also standard workhorse
tools from Overture and Wordtracker. Each one
is a fine research aid.
But my experience has led me to believe that
these interactive assistants are best used to fill
in the gaps of brain-powered research. It’s
impossible to think of every permutation of a
word or a concept. And it’s certainly beyond
human capacity to consolidate, in a flash, millions
of search results and rank their keywords
by relevance and frequency. But the human
mind excels in imagination, and that’s where
great keyword ideas come from. After you have
great ideas, use the keyword generators to
flesh them out with related words, commonly
searched phrases, and important misspellings.
search with the mindset of someone who is familiar with what you offer.
Imagine that you know nothing about your industry. What words lead to
a first discovery of your business?
All these inversions are similar, in that they all require you to erase your selfknowledge,
approaching your own product with a fresh mind. One trick is to
ask your friends, acquaintances, family, and even strangers what search terms
they would use to find what your offer. The beauty of AdWords is that you can
perform keyword experiments. If the keywords get disabled for poor performance,
you probably don’t want them anyway.
People type all sorts of things into Google, including mistakes. Even misspellings
return results — and sometimes ads. How does an ad get roped
onto a search page for a misspelled keyword? The advertiser anticipated that
misspelling and put it in the ad’s keyword list, that’s how, and that advertiser
is in the excellent position of being perhaps the only relevant link for the
searcher who hit a typo. Thinking up every plausible way to misspell your
keywords is a grueling chore, but every serious advertiser does it.
I recently experienced the benefit of productive misspellings. I ran a series of
ads keyed around the names of musicians and bands. I wanted an ad for the
group Blink-182, and it occurred to me that many searchers probably wouldn’t
know about the hyphen (or, trusting Google, simply wouldn’t bother typing it
in) and would also omit the space between blink and 182. So I included two
keywords: blink-182 and blink182. Indeed, the proper spelling ended up getting
disabled by Google for poor CTR, while the misspelling delivered outstanding
results.

Chapter 9 : Creating Effective Ad Groups part 5

One possibility to remember as you strive for the perfect keyword is counterintuitive.
Namely, being lower on the page can deliver better results than top
placement. The point of bidding up a keyword is to attain a higher position.
But there’s some question as to whether a high position necessarily means
better visibility, and there’s even more question about correlated advertising
results. Consider these factors, based on anecdotal experience shared by the
Google advertising community:
 Top-placed ads suffer from drone clickthroughs. Tire-kickers, it’s widely
supposed, veer straight for the top ad and click through it with no intent
to do business. Those determined to find useful information and products
are just as likely to click further down the AdWords column of ads.
Also, determined searchers — who are often the best leads and most
likely future customers — comparison-shop in the AdWords column,
clicking several in succession and examining each landing page.
 Competitive ad-bashing normally targets the top-placed ad. It isn’t particularly
ethical, but when competitors want to drive top-placed ads out
of their lofty position, they click through the ads, driving up costs (and
driving down ROI) for the advertiser. Such hostility is usually not
directed at lower-placed ads. (Google is alert to such ad-bashing and
penalizes those who are caught.)
 Top-of-page ads might not be as visible as ads in the AdWords column.
AdWords ads roll up to the top of the page when 9 or 10 ads qualify for
placement on the page, as shown in Figure 9-7. In those cases, only 8 ads
are placed in the AdWords column. While reaching the top of the page
(where Google used to sell cost-per-impression sponsored links) is an
accomplishment and an honor, there’s some doubt about the effectiveness
of that perch. Google users are accustomed to glancing over to the
right when checking out the ad portion of search results. And “ad blindness,”
in which the viewer disregards top-of-page, horizontal ads, is also
common. (For more on ad blindness, see Chapter 13.)
Here’s an example of a lower placement beating a higher placement. The report
in Figure 9-8 shows the Ad Groups of a campaign. Notice the performance of
the Josh Turner Ad Group. Although its average page position is the secondlowest
of the group, its CTR is the highest, by far.
Notwithstanding everything I say about low positions having certain advantages
over high positions, one aspect of high placement gives it undeniable
value. Google’s extended advertising networks present ads differently from
Google, in ways that dramatically reward the top spot. On AOL Search,
for example, often only a single ad is presented on the results page (see
Figure 9-9), and I have experienced outstanding clickthrough rates on ads
claiming that spot.

Chapter 9 : Creating Effective Ad Groups part 4

Researching and Refining Keywords
Enough mechanics. The remainder of this chapter is mostly about strategic
issues. I discuss formulating keyword concepts using the Keyword Suggestion
Tool, the widespread reliance on keyword generators, finding keywords by
thinking like your customer, and the four keyword-matching options at your
disposal. You find out about tactical positioning of ads on search pages, planning
for distribution in Google’s extended networks, and trademark controversies.
I continue the discussion of Google’s insistence on relevance at all
costs. Let’s get started.
Hunting for the ideal keyword
Imagine the gold ring of search advertising: the mythical keyword that’s in
high demand by searchers but has no competition from other advertisers.
That sweet spot in Google where, even if only for a short time, you can reach
Figure 9-4:
Here’s a
friendly
interface for
creating
unique
keyword
values.
Chapter 9: Creating Effective Ad Groups 167
millions of hungry searchers for the absolute minimum cost per click. In that
Eden-like scenario, your ad would be the only paid link on the page, floating
majestically in alluring solitude, receiving hordes of dirt-cheap clickthroughs.
That’s the ideal. Reality usually differs considerably. Sharp, opportunistic
advertisers converge on important keywords, driving up the price of good
positioning into the realm of dollars per click. But, amazingly, ideal and nearideal
keyword discoveries do exist. I’ve launched dozens of Ad Groups with
keywords for which I bid the minimum of $.05 per click, and watched the ads
claim positions no lower than third on the page (and several times the top
spot), earning very robust clickthrough rates. Driving highly targeted clicks
at a cost of $50 per thousand is a true bargain.
Chapter 4 describes Wordtracker, which strives to evaluate keywords based on
their popularity as search terms and their prevalence on Web sites, to arrive at
a competitive profile of a keyword or phrase. Wordtracker is certainly a tool
you should know about. It’s also important to research on your own, especially
in Google, where your keywords must perform well to stay in play. (Actually,
the ads perform well or badly, but the keywords are disabled if the ads fail.)
When you identify a potential keyword, search for it in Google — that’s the
most direct way to survey the competitive landscape in the venue that really
counts. Click the Search button a few times to catch ads that are in slowed or
spread-out distribution patterns. Notice also how many search results Google
finds. These two pieces of information — the number of search results and
the number of ads on the page — give you a good idea of the demand (from
searchers and advertisers) for that keyword. When demand from searchers
(represented indirectly by the number of search results) seems to exceed
demand from advertisers (represented directly by the number of ads), you
know you have a potentially productive keyword.
Remember that an attractive keyword need not result in millions of page
results in Google; hundreds of thousands of links represents a healthy marketplace
in which to present your ads. With this perspective, look at Figures 9-5
and 9-6. The first screen is Google’s results page for the keyword phrase discount
cds. The second screen shows the results for budget cds. The first page
shows strong demand everywhere: roughly 2.5 million search results and an
AdWords column full of ads. The second page shows strong consumer demand
(753,000 results) and faltering advertiser demand.
Is there room in that AdWords column for a third ad? Most certainly, especially
because one of the displayed ads is owned by a local shop. Whether a
third ad would be successful depends on many factors. But for the moment,
it appears that the third spot could be purchased for a low CPC bid. This situation
is ripe for testing, and it took me about 30 seconds to find it. Search
Google with your prospective keywords and with productive variations!

Chapter 9 : Creating Effective Ad Groups part 3

Adding and editing keywords
Most advertisers adjust keywords more frequently than they adjust ads. This
phenomenon is partly due to most advertisers using more keywords than ads.
(In other words, common practice is to associate one ad with many keywords.)
Advertisers and their marketing agents spend alarming amounts of time brainstorming
and researching keywords, so they naturally spend more time tweaking
keywords than tweaking ads.
Then there’s the fact that when Google slows or disables keywords, ads are
slowed or disabled on search pages for those faltering keywords. The natural
impulse, rightly or wrongly, is to correct the keyword. (It’s the right impulse
most of the time.)
Finally, the overwhelming emphasis on keywords throughout the SEM (search
engine marketing) universe leads to the popular belief that successful keyword
selection is the key to AdWords success.
True enough, creating successful keywords is crucial. Without a keyword, an
ad can’t run. And without a relevant keyword, the ad won’t run for long. Campaigns
of any respectable duration endure many ups and downs with their
keywords. I don’t believe there’s an AdWords advertiser on the planet who
hasn’t had a keyword disabled or a campaign slowed. And even if Google
doesn’t lower the boom, ROI considerations force resourceful advertisers to
continually refine their keyword selections.
Almost certainly, you will need to modify your keywords at some point (and
probably often). The following steps walk you through the mechanical part of
editing and adding keywords. I get into strategic considerations later.
1. In the Control Center, click the Campaign Management tab.
2. In the Campaign Name column, click the campaign containing the keywords
you want to edit.
You can’t edit shared keywords across campaigns.
3. Click the Ad Group containing the keywords you want to edit.
You can’t edit shared keywords across Ad Groups in a campaign. However,
you can make one specific campaign-wide keyword edit: adding negative
keywords that apply to every Ad Group in the campaign. Negative keywords
represent one of four keyword-matching options that I describe
later in the chapter. For now, assume that adding negative matching is not
the kind of keyword edit you’re after.
164 Part II: Creating and Managing an AdWords Campaign
4. Click the Edit Keywords link.
Note the Add Keywords link right next to it. The two resulting screens —
one for editing keywords, the other for adding keywords — are nearly
identical.
The Edit Keywords page (see Figure 9-3) includes a box showing your
CPC bid, giving you the chance to adjust it as you edit your keywords.
Furthermore, on that screen, nothing stops you from adding keywords
while you’re editing existing keywords. So there’s never any reason to
use the Add Keywords link.
5. Edit your keywords, add new keywords, and adjust your CPC bid, as
necessary.
6. Click the Estimate Traffic button for further adjustments of your bid,
or click the Save button to finish.
See Chapter 7 for a guide to using the Traffic Estimator.

Chapter 9 : Creating Effective Ad Groups part 2

Editing Elements of an Ad Group
After you set up your Ad Group, the work begins. Rarely does an Ad Group run
for long without issuing a call for maintenance. That call might derive from
your examination of your Ad Group’s performance. You might be pressed into
action by Google’s clamping down on an underperforming keyword. You might
discover that a lower-than-expected conversion rate at your site is resulting
in a negative ROI for your campaign, and you need to revise your bids in several
Ad Groups.
Whatever the reason for tweaking, you will eventually find yourself needing
to know (quickly, sometimes) how to edit your ads, keywords, and maximum
bids.
Editing ads
You use the same screen to edit, delete, and create ads in an existing Ad Group.
Editing and creating ads are essentially the same process. In this section, I concentrate
on editing as a way of modifying an ongoing Ad Group.
If you choose to create a new ad, which can also be an effective way to try
out a different wording or a new landing page, Google runs both ads concurrently
against the same keywords and shows you each ad’s distribution percentage.
Running two ads in one Ad Group might seem like a less precise type
of marketing, and it would be if there were no way to determine individual
statistics for each ad. But you can easily break apart the data of concurrent
ads in the Reports section (see Chapter 8).
At any rate, in this section I walk you through the mechanics of editing an
existing ad. Follow these steps:
1. In the Control Center, click the Campaign Management tab.
2. In the Campaign Name column, click the campaign that contains the
Ad Group running the individual ad you want to edit.
3. Click the Ad Group containing the ad you want to edit.
4. Click the Edit link next to the display of the ad you want to edit.
When the Ad Group has only one ad, the Edit link is positioned above
the statistics table, next to the display of your ad. If multiple ads exist,
the Edit links appear with the display of your multiple ads, below the
statistics table, as shown in Figure 9-2.
162 Part II: Creating and Managing an AdWords Campaign
5. On the edit screen, make changes to your ad.
As you no doubt recognize, this screen is the same as the ad-creation
screen. Type your edits, and watch the display lines change when you
click out of the edit box.
6. Click the Save changes button.
Your ad begins appearing in its new version immediately.
Of course, you may delete ads instead of editing them. Doing so is a one-click
process, and that click should be directed at the Delete link below any displayed
ad on your Ad Group page. Deleting the only ad of an Ad Group does
not make the Ad Group implode and vanish. (You must select an Ad Group
and click the Delete button to obliterate that Ad Group.) If you delete the sole
ad of your Ad Group, you are no longer marketing to keywords of that Ad
Group. But the Ad Group structure remains in your campaign, waiting for you
to create a new ad for it.

Chapter 9 : Creating Effective Ad Groups part 1

Taken from Building Your Bussiness with Google for Dummies by Brad Hill

Ad Groups are the fundamental marketing units that propel your AdWords
campaign. If keywords are the sparks of AdWords success, Ad Groups
are the flames. And, one hopes, your campaign is a roaring bonfire. But forget
the heated analogy. The point is that success in AdWords depends largely on
the effective creation and manipulation of Ad Groups.
Why is the Ad Group the most powerful element of your campaign? Because
it contains the four motors of your advertising and conversion strategy: ads,
keywords, bid prices, and destination pages. As such, the Ad Group defines
what your advertising campaign looks like, who it is shown to, how much it
costs, and the location where your business meets your customers.
Although it might seem excessive to devote an entire chapter to Ad Groups,
the truth is that I could probably write an entire book about them. (Such a
book would also include pictures of my editor’s dog and my personal ruminations
on Leno versus Letterman.) So be happy that I’m limiting this examination
of Ad Groups to one chapter.
Here you find strategies and mechanics that are not covered elsewhere. The
mechanical aspects include creating Ad Groups in the Control Center and
editing their parameters (keywords, ads, and bid prices). The strategic issues
include the competitive struggle for placement on the page (effective bidding)
and putting your ads on productive search pages (researching and selecting
keywords). The important crafts of writing good ads and composing dynamic
landing pages are covered in Chapter 8.

Creating New Ad Groups
You create Ad Groups in AdWords Campaigns. You can’t open an account
without creating an Ad Group, even if you never deploy that initial effort.
Assuming that you own an AdWords account, then, you have some experience
with the mechanics of creating an Ad Group. Busy advertisers open
new Ad Groups frequently. Here’s how it happens:
1. In the Control Center, click the Campaign Management tab.
2. In the Campaign Name column, click any campaign.
Naturally, you should click the target campaign of the new Ad Group. If
you don’t want the new Ad Group to be influenced by that campaign’s
global Campaign settings, click the Create New Campaign link instead of
an existing campaign. Do not hesitate to begin new campaigns, and lots
of them. When you do open a new campaign, Google walks you through
the Campaign settings, and then returns you to this point and marches
you through the creation of a new Ad Group.
3. Click the Create New Ad Group link.
4. Enter the name of the Ad Group.
I used to include the campaign name in my Ad Group titles, but I lost that
habit after experiencing screen clutter when running AdWords reports.
There’s no need to duplicate the campaign name in the Ad Group title,
because the campaign name is always visible somewhere on the screen
when you drill into its Ad Groups.
5. Scroll down and compose your ad, and then click the Create Ad &
Continue button.
If this Ad Group is not the first Ad Group of the campaign, Google supplies
the most recently created ad of the campaign to work with. So you’re
not necessarily creating the ad from scratch. Even if the ad copy differs
substantially from the previous ad, chances are good that you won’t
change the display URL and the destination URL. This convenience
saves time when mass-producing Ad Groups with ads that are nearly
identical.
6. Enter your keyword(s), and then click the Save Keywords button.
7. Enter your bid in the Traffic Estimator, and then click the Calculate
Estimates button.
8. Adjust your bid and recalculate the traffic and placement estimates
until you reach a good balance of cost versus position.
160 Part II: Creating and Managing an AdWords Campaign
Later in this chapter, I discuss bidding strategies and the importance of
knowing your return on investment (ROI) needs. For now, try for an average
position of four or higher (which means 4.0 or lower in the Average
Position column), without committing to paying more than you think a
clickthrough is worth. See Figure 9-1.
9. Click the Save & Continue button.
Your Ad Group is created, and begins running immediately. That immediacy
always takes me a bit by surprise. For some reason I expect a confirmation
and review of my selections, like you see in an online shopping
cart, before the Ad Group is launched to the public. The Save & Continue
button sounds like a mid-process button, not the final launch button
that it is.
If you want to stop the process, immediately click the Pause Ad Group link
after Step 9. Even in those few seconds of activity, you could generate hundreds
of impressions and some clickthroughs if your keywords are popular.
So get in the habit of deliberating on your Ad Group choices before clicking
that final Save & Continue button.