Activating Your Account / Google For Dummies

Activating Your Account

The AdWords account is activated by providing credit card information for payment. There is no additional activation procedure after providing your billing information. When your credit card is verified (which takes mere seconds), your ads immediately begin running, as shown in Figure 11-6.

Figure 11-6: This ad appeared on this results page within ten seconds of activating it.

Warning

Given Google’s continual tidal wave of search traffic, chances are good that your ads and their potential clickthroughs will start appearing before you make any adjustments to your campaign. Therefore, you should make those adjustments before giving Google your billing information. If you’re confident of your campaign expenses, go ahead and activate the account. But if you created an ad as an experiment and are unsure whether to proceed, do not fill in your billing information.

Activate your account with these steps:

Go to your control center.

To do so, go to adwords.google.com. Then type your e-mail address and password.
Click the Edit Billing Information link.
On the Edit Billing Information page, fill in your credit card and address information.
Using the drop-down menus, choose a primary business type.
Click the Record my new billing information button.

Google charges $5 to activate the AdWords account.