The Core

I've never seen it improve conversion and every time I've seen it switched on its cost more money, so I'm not impressed. They claim great things but I suspect that because the average adwords user hasn't mastered the basics let alone optimisation.

One of my customers self-manages his adwords after getting hacked off with agencies ballsing it up for him.  His self managed beat the agency he took over from. He's now using conversion optimizer of a few groups where it seems to work OK for him.   I don't have access to all the data, but the impression I get is that it works out OK as a hand-free way of managing some of the smaller stuff that he can't be arsed to spend too much time on. He can then focus on the bigger groups where he wants to maintain more control and his time is better spent.