Google AdWords Tax Calculator

How Much of YOUR AdWords Ad Spend is Wasted?

A Few Quick Questions...

About This Calculator

The Google AdWords ecosystem is a $20 billion+ market which quite literally drives trillions of Dollars in commerce. In spite of its great success, many marketers have not grasped its power yet. Some have ignored it. Thousands of advertisers have tried and failed.

Given that advertisers are already spending over $20 billion a year on the ads, it is not as easy to break into as it once was. Competition is entrenched, with well optimized campaigns the provide the profits needed to fuel further distribution and growth. And quality scores have the house (aka Google) competing against new advertisers who are looking for cheap clicks.

Is AdWords Easy?

Google makes it easy to set up a new campaign literally in minutes. And they offer new advertisers a wealth of information, but to some degree it is like the fox guarding the hen house.

The AdWords system is set up to maximize Google's yield, often at the expense of new advertisers - who do not realize the hidden "tax" in many default settings.

When you create your first AdWords campaign you feel in control. But behind the scenes, your ads show up for irrelevant keywords (a feature of "expanded broad match"). And your ads appear on websites that are unsuitable to your business (ever tried selling retirement software on MySpace?)

These extraneous impressions fleece advertisers out of billions of Dollars a year in lost profits. And they cost some advertisers so much that they give up before they really learn how AdWords works.

What You Need to Know

This calculator aims to help new advertisers save that money by alerting them to the value of...

  • how crucial ad testing & tracking are to sustained success
  • targeting different regions with different campaigns
  • breaking out search and content campaigns into separate campaigns
  • using different keyword match types to fine tune ad targeting
  • the importance of filtering poor performing keywords and site

Obligatory Disclaimers

  • This calculator does not store any personally identifiable information.
    • We do not even know what keyword market you are in (because we don't ask).
    • The goal of this tool is to help new advertisers become successful with AdWords.
  • Every keyword market is unique, so...
    • These estimates are just that: estimates. This tool is not an exact science which gives you results to the penny, but one that suggests areas for improvement. Your improvements from following our suggestions may be greater or lesser than the amounts shown.
    • The above tool assumes you are looking for direct measurable returns and data like lifetime customer value. With more abstract ad campaigns focused on branding it is much harder to measure efficacy.
    • We hope this calculator helps save you money, and we thank you for visiting :D
    • If you find this calculator helpful please link to it, write about it, and tell friends about it any way you can think of :D