Google Ads Experiments Now Require an End Date

I received an email from Google explaining how the experiments I’m currently running without an end date, will have an automatically applied end date of the 23rd August 2024 in a few days time. I can, of course beat them to it and apply end date before they do, or simply edit the end date Google has set (within restrictions).

“Effective from 1 June 2024, all current Campaign Experiments without an explicitly specified end date will automatically have a default end date set to 23 August 2024. You can also adjust the end date at any time before the experiment ends.”

The change that isn’t mentioned in the email, is that experiments will now be required to have and end date, where previously you could set them up to be ‘ongoing’, and judge for yourself when to end the experiment.

The maximum length of a Google Ads experiment is now between 14 and 84 days (2-12 weeks). This might spark some concern to advertisers who utilise the experiments feature, however, I can only see it as being a good thing:

You shouldn’t need a longer time-frame - you should really only be setting up experiments for campaigns that have enough data for you to be able to conclude within that time-frame.

Proper usage of Google Ads experiments - the experiments are designed for advertisers to create a controlled test by creating an A/B test based on a percentage of traffic you can set. This helps you make informed decisions quicker which in turn helps improve performance. Having experiments running for long periods of time also means there will always be a percentage of budget being spent on underperforming activity (unless in the rare instance performance is identical).

Tidy account, tidy mind - More often than not, when I review or inherit a Google Ads account, there are leftover experiments that have been running for long periods of time that have probably been forgotten. I advocate a tidy and well organised Ads account, so having a time limit on experiments is welcome.