Google Bidding Issue

eventum issue 5297

This is happening in multiple content based ad groups. It is the content network bid in a group with both placements and keywords where the campaign is enabled for all placementss. In the Google AdWords UI, the AdGroup has managed placements and automatic placements.

The only bid change Bill found in the Google change history in the AdWords UI is from 4/25 made by the AM for this target. He set the bid to 12.00 where it remains.

Ross noticed that foxandhoundsdaily.com/blog/charles-crumpley (in the same ad group) has a current bid (in Admax) of $12.00. Is it possible that it is getting mixed up with the bid target we've been looking at?

searchEngineAccountID: 15277

searchEngineGroup: accountID=289 and id=750012

sourceID: 97049862

bidTargetID: 82226682

See attached for queries adn resultsets when they were originally ran between May 14-May 17)

This query (in attached file) shows alternation of bid value for the _SAME_ bid target. This might be due to AdMax setting the bid, but us not sending the bid correctly to Google in SearchEngineBidManager, and SearchEngineUpdater then syncs and saves the current bid to the database.

select * from bidHistory where bidTargetID = 82226682 and time > '2010-05-01' order by time;

Ross: found exceptions in the legalzoom bidding logs which may or may not be related. Maybe those are preventing the $12.00 content bid from being set.

2010-05-18 12:20:27.255 (3) [P1T6]: Handling Account (14297) "New - Incorporation" for user (739) "LegalZoom"

2010-05-18 12:20:27.978 (3) [P1T1]: Caught other/unrecoverable API Exception: "com.thesearchagency.searchengines.SearchEngineCommandException"

2010-05-18 12:20:27.979 (3) [P1T1]: ...Bulk mutate job with id[50955607] seUserID[739] removed from queue

2010-05-18 12:20:27.979 (2) [P1T1]: Exception [Exception setting bids for group identifier:378957727]:com.thesearchagency.searchengines.SearchEngineCommandException: com.thesearchagency.searchengines.SearchEngineCommandException: java.lang.Throwable: Results were not successful for reason(s): [EntityNotFound.INVALID_ID @ operations[0].operations[0].operand.criterion.id; trigger:'293762669', EntityNotFound.INVALID_ID @ operations[0].operations[6].operand.criterion.id; trigger:'293757749']

at com.thesearchagency.searchengines.google.GoogleAdWordsAPI.setBids(GoogleAdWordsAPI.java:1651)

at com.thesearchagency.searchengines.google.GoogleAPISearchEngine.setGroupBids(GoogleAPISearchEngine.java:1810)

at com.thesearchagency.searchengines.SearchEngineBidManager$SearchEngineAccountWorker.run(SearchEngineBidManager.java:990)

at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Unknown Source)

at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(Unknown Source)

at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source)

at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(Unknown Source)

at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)

at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Caused by: com.thesearchagency.searchengines.SearchEngineCommandException: java.lang.Throwable: Results were not successful for reason(s): [EntityNotFound.INVALID_ID @ operations[0].operations[0].operand.criterion.id; trigger:'293762669', EntityNotFound.INVALID_ID @ operations[0].operations[6].operand.criterion.id; trigger:'293757749']

at com.thesearchagency.searchengines.google.GoogleAdWordsAPI.processResults(GoogleAdWordsAPI.java:1969)

at com.thesearchagency.searchengines.google.GoogleAdWordsAPI.setBids(GoogleAdWordsAPI.java:1628)

... 8 more

Caused by: java.lang.Throwable: Results were not successful for reason(s): [EntityNotFound.INVALID_ID @ operations[0].operations[0].operand.criterion.id; trigger:'293762669', EntityNotFound.INVALID_ID @ operations[0].operations[6].operand.criterion.id; trigger:'293757749']

... 10 more

2010-05-18 12:20:28.492 (3) [P1T7]: Completed account "CYN Content"

2010-05-18 12:20:28.509 (3) [P1T7]: Handling Account (40652) "New - Incorporation - Local/State" for user (739) "LegalZoom"

Here is the changehistory from Google on the account. Patrick (the AM) made two changes on the 14th.

12.00 -> .05 (First change because he was freaking out)

.05-->12.00 (Reverting first change because he wanted engineering to be able to track down the issue)

Bill: I am going to tell him to make the changes he needs to and hope we do not override them as the account is having some issues - this is happening in multiple content based ad groups. It is the content network bid in a group with both placements and keywords where the campaign is enabled for all placementss.

Ross: I see 8 jobs today running in production for LZ for bidding on Google. I doubt Patrick actually ran 8 jobs today. There are some exceptions but I am wondering if we have a bid job caught in a loop.

Ross: I noticed that foxandhoundsdaily.com/blog/charles-crumpley has a current bid of $12.00 (which is what is showing up as the content bid). I would like to change this to $11.95 to see if it affects the content bid. Do you have any objections? We can set it back as soon as we verify whether it had any impact.

Ross: I changed the AdMax Min value for foxandhoundsdaily.com/blog/charles-crumpley to $11.95. The AdMax bid is $0.60 so the min should be used to change the bid on Google from $12.00 to $11.95. We can then check to see if this affects the content bid as well.

Ross: (after looking at google) Looks like it did not effect the content bid.

Ross: I just reverted the change I had made so the foxandhoundsdaily.com/blog/charles-crumpley bid should go back to $12.00.

On May 18, Ross made a test bid change to one of the placements.