Before restarting paused campaigns in January, check the payment card, end dates, ad schedules, budgets, ad text, extensions and landing pages, since each was often changed for December. Then restart them on a set date, not when someone remembers.

Paused for a week, off for six

Many small businesses paused their AdWords campaigns last week. The office is closed, calls go to voicemail, and paying for clicks nobody can answer makes no sense.

Pausing is the easy half. Restarting depends on someone remembering during the first busy week of January, and nothing in the account will remind them.

A paused campaign sends no bills and no warnings. It simply stops, and the silence looks just like a quiet month.

The campaigns that do come back often come back wrong: still selling December, still switched off on the days the business was shut, or stopped by a card that expired at the end of December.

What the holidays leave behind

The third is the easiest to miss. Christmas and Boxing Day fell on a Monday and Tuesday, as do the first two days of January, so a schedule with those weekdays switched off keeps skipping them all month.

Ended is not the same as paused

Some owners set an end date instead of pausing, so the campaign stops by itself at the closure. That part works.

In January the campaign shows as ended, and switching it on achieves nothing until the end date is changed or removed. Someone who restarts the paused campaigns and skims past the ended ones leaves them off.

Read the status of every campaign, not only the ones you remember changing.

Check the card first

When an automatic payment is declined, the ads stop until the card is updated. Cards with a December expiry date stop working on New Year's Day, whether or not the replacement has arrived.

Update the payment method before restarting anything, and look for a billing warning in the account. A campaign that is switched on but cannot be paid for does not run.

While you are there, check who receives the account's email. A billing warning sent to a former employee helps nobody.

December's ads in January

Read every ad that will run, not just the campaign names. December ads often mention gift certificates, holiday hours, order deadlines or a Christmas offer.

Check the extensions too. A sitelink to a holiday page, a callout about Christmas delivery and a call extension scheduled for holiday hours all survive a restart.

Then click through to each landing page. Holiday pages are often taken down in January while the ads pointing to them carry on.

Write the January ads before restarting. Google reviews new and changed ads before showing them, usually within a working day, so changes made on the morning of reopening may not run that day.

A worked example

A flight school at a regional airport advertises discovery flights, which are popular as gifts, and its private pilot ground school, which starts a new class each February.

Last year it kept the discovery flight campaign running through December for gift buyers, with Mondays and Tuesdays switched off in the schedule for the two holiday weeks. The ground school campaign was paused over the break.

In January the discovery flight ads still offered gift certificates for Christmas, with a sitelink to a holiday page that had been removed, and the schedule went on skipping Mondays and Tuesdays until February.

The ground school campaign stayed paused until the middle of February, a week after the class began. Nobody had been asked to restart it, so nobody did.

This year the school wrote a one-page restart list before closing. It names who restarts each campaign and when, the January ads are already written and approved, and the schedule change has a note beside it.

Restart on a date, not a memory

Decide now when each campaign comes back, and write it down with a name beside it. For most businesses that is the morning they reopen, or a day earlier if customers call ahead.

AdWords can do the restart itself. An automated rule can enable a campaign at a set date and time, and it can be set up today, before anyone leaves.

Check on the morning anyway. A rule that ran on an account with a declined card has restarted nothing.

Budgets, bids and search terms

Budgets lowered for the quiet weeks need raising, and bid adjustments made for the holidays need undoing. Both are easy to forget because nothing looks broken.

Compare the first weeks back with last January, not with the weeks before Christmas, before deciding a campaign has stopped working.

And read the search terms report after the first week. Searches change with the season, and what people typed in December is not what they type in January.

Every account, not just the main one

Many businesses pay for ads in more than one place: a second AdWords account opened by a previous supplier, Bing Ads campaigns imported from AdWords, a Facebook promotion with its own end date.

Put them all on the restart list. An account nobody remembers is one nobody restarts, or one that never stopped.

The counter-case

A business that never paused, and whose ads say nothing seasonal, has little to check beyond the card and the schedule.

A business that is quiet until spring may reasonably leave some campaigns paused into February, provided that is a decision with a date attached rather than an accident.

And a small account with one campaign takes a few minutes to restart properly. The list still applies; it is just short.

For everyone else: restart on a set date, with the card, schedule, ads and landing pages checked first.

The first morning back

  1. Update the payment card before anything else.
  2. Clear end dates set for the closure.
  3. Restore the ad schedule to its usual days.
  4. Replace holiday ad text and extensions.
  5. Click through to every landing page.
  6. Raise budgets lowered for the holidays.
  7. Confirm each campaign is actually running.

Step three is the one that hides longest. A schedule that skips two weekdays still runs the ads on the other five, so the account looks healthy all month.

A store restarting Shopping campaigns has one more check, the feed's holiday sale prices, which ties back to shopping ads for a small store.

Frequently asked questions

Why do paused campaigns stay paused so long?

Nothing reminds anyone. A paused campaign sends no bills or alerts, so unless someone has been asked to restart it on a set date, it quietly stays off.

What is the difference between paused and ended?

A paused campaign restarts when enabled. One with an end date in the past shows as ended and will not run until the end date is changed or removed.

Why check the payment card first?

When an automatic payment is declined, the ads stop. Cards with a December expiry stop working on New Year's Day, even if the campaigns are switched on.

What holiday changes are easy to miss?

Ad schedules that switched off weekdays for the closure, sitelinks and call extensions set for holiday hours, lowered budgets, and ads pointing to holiday pages that were removed.

Can AdWords restart campaigns automatically?

Yes. An automated rule can enable a campaign at a set date and time. Set it up before closing, then check on the morning it was due.

How should January results be judged?

Against last January rather than the weeks before Christmas, and only after the first week or so, once the search terms report shows what people are searching for now.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Campaigns paused for the holidays?

Give us access before you close. We will set the restart dates and check the ads, schedules and pages for January.

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