Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable says the beta testing has been confirmed, and points to a WebmasterWorld thread that includes a response from an official Google representative:

ppcbuyers: I noticed a new feature under Budget Options for "Timeframe", but only see it available in one client account – anyone else?

AdWordsAdvisor (Google Rep): Sounds as if the one account has been made a part of a limited beta test, ppcbuyers. Not much I can add beyond that.

Google has a page up explaining monthly budgets and the differences between monthly and daily ones.

"With a daily budget, lower traffic days may mean that your ads receive fewer impressions and have some budget leftover. We don’t use this leftover budget, but we do attempt to compensate for the loss in traffic by serving impressions up to 20% over the daily budget on high traffic days. However, some high traffic days require budget flexibility beyond this amount," says Google.

"With a monthly budget, we’ll adjust your budget automatically each day to meet traffic demand while still respecting your budget for the calendar month. For example, if your ads often receive less traffic on non-business days during a month, we’ll apply your unused budget to remaining business days to take traffic fluctuations into account."

It is unclear how many people actually have access to the Timeframe feature so far. I would imagine that the feature will be quite welcome by advertisers nevertheless.

(Coverage of the ACCM conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

The contextual search advertising market levels the playing field to a point for online marketers. Bidding and budgets play a big role, but as Ryan Gibson noted, one may be able to derive some extra benefit from PPC programs.

First things first, though. Hammer out a list of specific keywords, ones that people use to find your site and pages. Gibson suggested only testing 3 to 10 keywords per SKU a site has, to take the pulse of search-driven traffic and gauge what works.

Negative keywords help control what search drives to your site, and against your PPC budget; use them wisely. Matching remains important to the effectiveness of keywords. Gibson said exact matches offer twice the value of broad-matched keywords.

When creating ad copy for the landing pages where your throngs of PPC visitors will hit, Gibson tipped people to echo the user’s search string. This makes the lead into the ad copy a more natural feel for the visitor.

Doing this properly motivates people to shop where they have arrived. Ad copy on the landing page should tell them why they should shop at the destination, while including offer details like promotions for shoppers.

Gibson said testing means more than evaluating a click-through rate. Look at overall conversions and efficiency too: are people moving in an orderly fashion through the checkout process, or are they wandering around to different places on the site to find what they want?

Keep in mind the habits of shoppers. Since it’s easy to do, they may make multiple visits before purchasing something. The higher the price for the item, the longer they will probably take to consummate the deal.

During the question and answer session, Gibson acknowledged the cost question within the context of budgeting for ad campaigns. As long as it is profitable, spend and keep spending, Gibson said.

Being aware of profitability requires time for managing the campaign. Being aware of daily, weekly, and monthly reports keeps one in touch with which campaigns are profitable.

Remember what we mentioned about people making multiple visits before converting on a buy? Trends may be having an impact, especially in the context of product reviews. In other words, you not only have to know your inventory (how else can you provide quality customer service?), but you have to know what people think of a particular product.

Knowing these things helps produce profitable campaigns along with prudent spending decisions. Even the richest businesses refuse to spend indiscriminately, and neither should smaller businesses either.

Maybe it’s the right move, and maybe it isn’t.  In any event, BtoB reports, "The survey of 213 b-to-b marketers . . . .  found that 60.1% of marketers plan to increase their overall marketing budgets next year; 29.6% plan to keep budgets flat; and 10.3% plan budget decreases."

Marketers do, at least, seem to be adapting to the times, as the article later continues, "The biggest budget increases will be seen in online marketing, with 79.1% of marketers planning to boost their online budgets next year."

Or maybe, instead of adapting, they’re just grasping at Google-colored straws.  Still, as a recent study of four major newspapers revealed, online properties can do pretty well regardless of things like subscription fees.

So prepare yourself for a lot of new Web ads.  And with any luck, they won’t be of the going-out-of-business variety.