So you're running your business. You've put everything into getting it to this point. And now you're ready to embark on the next step - getting more customers. Everywhere you look people are talking about Google AdWords - Heck, you even got a voucher through the mail.... if you spend $25 Google are going to give you $75!

How can that be a bad deal?

And it's simple. Google are going to walk you through it... So you open the box.

In the olden days... long before the internet... advertisers had a term for ads on the front page of a newspaper that would not be seen when the paper was on the newsstand or left on a table - below the fold.

Generally, if you were paying for a front page ad, you would pay less if your ad was to be positioned below the fold. Makes sense.

Online advertisers have borrowed this term to describe ads that are on a web page, but that are not visible to the user unless they scroll down to it.

If you are an advertiser you want your ad to be seen - obviously. And you are happy to pay for your ad to be seen. The model for this is CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions). It differs from CPC (Cost per Click) in that you pay every time your ad appears 1,000 times on web pages. At least that's what we thought was the case.

With the introduction of enhanced campaigns Google removed control over which devices ads could target. With the Legacy settings you would choose to show your ads on mobiles only, or desktop PC's only... with the "enhancement" your ads are eligible to appear across all device types.

On the one hand, I get it. There are so many potential touch points to reach a potential client that on one level it makes sense.

But on others it simply doesn't.

Here at Advent we manage Google AdWords accounts for clients all over the world. Principally our clients are in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK. We even have a few clients here in Spain (gasp!).

One would think that this would be just the kind of business that Google would welcome - the global village in action.

Strangely, however, it seems to be a case of do as I say, not as I do.

A few days ago there was a debate on the Spanish Google AdWords Community Forum about ad scheduling. Some of the comments were misleading, others simply incorrect.

I weighed in - after all I had spent some time getting my head around this issue a couple of years ago.

So here's a break down of the problem...