Google Adwords - better value than ever

Adwords vs Overture short term

[Gramme]

We use both Adwords and Overture & pay for Adwords in US dollars.
If anyone else does the same, its worth mentioning we have had a massive increase in roi recently (about 20%+ sale per pound spent) simply because Adwords are getting cheaper daily.

They were already better than Overture (at least in our industry), but now with the dollar nose diving to $1.78 to the pound last week and $1.81 today, this is the best value we're likely to get.

Some simple short term advice - if you do adwords (and dont bid on our terms lol) consider increasing it. Someone might as well benefit from the dollars decline.

Anyone else seen changes to roi

[IanTurner]

That seems very sensible advice Gramme, and welcome to WebmasterWorld

[mistah]

I can understand how this works if you just want to be listed under an uncompetitive term. But where you are competing for position, surely Google takes the exchange rate into account?

E.g. at an exchange rate of £1 = $1.80 you would need to bid $1.81 to beat a £1.00 bid (assuming the same click-through rates).

[Gramme]

All our terms are between slightly to hugely competitive.

The point is that if you want to beat a competitor's bid of $1 but cannot justify a bid higher than around 60p, it has suddenly become viable to do so.

Remember, a lot of us are based in the UK and thus we are paid in Pounds while advertising on Adwords in Dollars. We do volume sales, so some of the formerly marginal terms are worth a bid on, and since most people won't raise their US denominated bids just because of exchange rate fluctuations, its a good chance.

Our original ROI estimates from last year were based on a $1.45 exchange rate for adwords.

[bignet]

Will your US-born uk-targeted adwords reach more uk customers if you were to use us adwords targeting uk customers?

I think google uk adwords partners are not that many

[GodLikeLotus]

And this will get better as the dollar continues to drop in value. I can see $2.50 to the £1.00, this year.

Compared to Overture's minimum bid of 10p this does really make AD-Words even better.

[shorebreak]

I sell PPC management technology here in the U.S., and reading this makes me think we might want to start selling into the U.K. sooner than 2005 as we had planned.

[exmoorbeast]

If it goes to 2 bucks 50 to the pound I will run naked through Hyde Park! I am currently buying as many dollars as I can for use next year. Crikes, I hope you are wrong!

Excellent ideas though. Yes it must even be compeitive for UK advertisers to sell US goods and services to US people via US affiliate programmes, let alone paying US owned search engines for UK traffic in USD.

[Calum]

To state the obvious: if you are only listing your Adwords in the UK, then your competition will be other £ Sterling rates - so the exchange rate doesn't help at all. It's only if you are listing in the US against US based competitors that you experience the benefit.

My credit card bill shows payments in £ Sterling + google campaign management denominates in £ Sterling too. So for this UK lister the exchange rate hasn't changed a thing :¬(

[exmoorbeast]

strange, i get billed in USD for UK traffic, so perhaps all is not so_obvious?