The Myth of the “Best Hours and Days to Run Ads”: Does Google Know the Best Time to Serve Your Ads?

[Yeezypay]

One of the most widespread myths in affiliate marketing is the idea that launching advertising campaigns during specific hours or days will lead to higher Conversion Rates (CR), prevent account bans, and guarantee a Return on Investment (ROI) of 100% or more.

Some affiliates even visit forums to ask whether it is possible to increase conversions if they correctly set up the ad display schedule.



This affiliate shared that he observed that his campaign performs poorly on weekends and wonders if pausing it during those days could save their budget.

In fact, for several years now, Google has been automating its ad serving algorithms to such a degree that manually tweaking ad schedules is often unnecessary and can even affect campaign performance.

So in this article, the YeezyPay team, a service that provides access to trusted Google Ads agency accounts, will explain in clear, detailed terms how Google’s algorithms work, why manually setting ad schedules is usually a losing strategy, and how affiliates can use these algorithms to their advantage.

Google’s Smart Bidding Algorithms Explained: Should You Trust Them?

Google Ads relies on a technology called Smart Bidding to automatically optimize ad campaigns. This includes the scheduling of ad creatives based on time and days.



According to Google’s official technical manuals, Smart Bidding uses machine learning to analyze millions of data points and adjust campaign parameters, such as bid amounts, targeting, and display times, to maximize CR and secure the most cost-effective bids. Google’s “Bid Adjustments” section explains that Smart Bidding dynamically tailors ad delivery to achieve the best possible results, considering factors like user behavior, location, device type, and search intent.

Google itself claims that the Smart Bidding system is much more effective than manual settings. The algorithm takes into account millions of different parameters and, for example, sets the display time taking them all into account.

However, this system also has a drawback. If you stop the campaign, the algorithms will have to be trained again. Experienced affiliates on BHW frequently warn against pausing campaigns, as this causes the algorithm to lose data collected from user interactions.



An affiliate warned against pausing advertising campaigns, citing that the algorithms will lose the necessary data.

For this reason, affiliates working with grayhat and blackhat niches cannot rely on algorithms if their account is poorly warmed up and lacks sufficient trust. Low-trust accounts are more likely to face ad campaign rejections or bans, which disrupt the algorithm’s ability to optimize campaigns. However, affiliates using trusted Google Ads agency accounts barely encounter any of these issues due to the accounts’ high trust levels. These accounts have a higher chance of campaign approval and a lower risk of bans, therefore allowing Smart Bidding to function more effectively.

In other words, Google technology automatically adjusts the time of ad display in such a way that it brings the highest CR rate and sets the most profitable bid. All you need is to have a consistent and stable campaign, which can allow the algorithm to optimize it for the best ad schedule.

How Google’s algorithms work in practice: Opinions and recommendations of affiliates

First of all, affiliates consistently point out that there are no universal “ideal hours” for running ads, as conversions are influenced by a combination of factors. For example, a user might see an ad in the afternoon but only make a purchase late at night. From the advertiser’s perspective, it might appear that nighttime ads drive conversions, leading them to avoid advertising during the day.

This perception is misleading and can negatively impact CR, as the daytime ad exposure may have been crucial to the eventual purchase. Unlike humans, Google’s algorithms can track these intricate patterns across millions of data points, making automatic optimization more effective than manual adjustments.



The factors of purchase eventually add up to a bigger picture that a person simply cannot track.

Since algorithms can process these factors, such as user behavior, search intent, device type, and location, automatic optimization generally delivers better results than manual scheduling.



An experienced affiliate on Black Hat World forum noted that, since 2024, combining Smart Bidding with Broad Match has consistently produced the best results.

Smart Bidding uses machine learning to adjust bids and targeting in real-time, while Broad Match expands the reach of ads to capture relevant searches. However, before going completely automated, affiliates recommend collecting at least 30 initial signals (for example, conversions).



Affiliates recommend collecting at least 30-50 conversions manually over 30 days before switching to Smart Bidding. This will provide the algorithms with initial data.

Gathering this data can be time-consuming and risky, as low-trust accounts are vulnerable to bans or rejections during this period, especially in grayhat niches like gambling or crypto. Affiliates using Google Ads agency accounts from YeezyPay can overcome this challenge more efficiently. These accounts offer unlimited daily ad spend, enabling affiliates to drive significant traffic and collect conversions quickly, often within days rather than a month. Additionally, the high trust level of agency accounts reduces the risk of bans during this critical learning phase, ensuring the algorithm has strong data points to work with.

Some experienced affiliates also warn that Google’s algorithms aren’t always perfect. In cases where a campaign underperforms, for example, an affiliate reported zero CR on weekends, they advise against switching to manual scheduling. Instead, they recommend reducing the advertising budget to the minimum possible while keeping the campaign active. This approach preserves the algorithm’s learning data, saves money, and allows affiliates to troubleshoot campaign issues without starting from scratch.



This strategy was suggested to the affiliate who was struggling with poor weekend performance.

Therefore, according to affiliates, the best approach is to trust Google’s algorithms and adopt the Smart Bidding + Broad Match strategy, provided that you let the algorithms train with sufficient initial data (30–50 conversions). Humans cannot accurately identify the ideal hours for running ads, but Google’s algorithms can, and they actively do so by analyzing user behavior and campaign performance in real-time.

Summary

There is no ideal time for running ads, and trying to find it can sometimes ruin the entire advertising campaign. Smart Bidding protects against this. The technology will often determine the display time for your advertising campaign itself, which will set you a satisfactory bid for each auction and bring the best audience; it is almost impossible to determine this manually. But again, it is important to help the algorithms in every possible way. You should put effort into increasing the Quality Score and contributing the necessary budget so that the advertising campaign can run consistently, without stopping, in order to train the algorithms. Using trusted agency accounts can help with this, both through unlimited daily spend and through their high trust level, which prevents them from getting banned frequently.