Who is playing?
Shak
i always thought you could get premium listings when you spend x amount and get x ctr and if you met the formula instead of an adword box you could earn premium listing.
I don't know how it "levels the field" though. I've clicked on a million more adword boxes then i've EVER done premium listings and that may be why they're gone.
My feeling sais adwords has "cleaned the house" before the vacation.
I say this because, after spending 30K+ they suddenly tell me 1 day before the holliday that i have unacceptable content and disabled my ads, also all my competitors are gone, no premium listing on any of the phrases where there used to be for me or my competittors.
and of course new ads dont get approved in the holliday , think the vacation is over tomorrow right?
Byronm, it would level the field because ctr on premium listings are often way higher(double/triple) than normal adwords. just because you don't click them doesn't mean anything. (with all respect)
I'm betting this will be a boost to small advertising agencies who know how to get premium position without just throwing money around and expecting results.
a) The Premium Sponsored listings, as a separate deal with Google from Adwords
~or~
b) The appearance of 2 sponsored results spanning the whole width at the top of the listings, and being a different colour from the background.
What I mean is; although Premium Listings are being discontinued; will we still see the 2 highest ranking AdWords being displayed at the top, in full width, and with a different background colour?
I assumed that the top adwords sponsors were going to get the "premium spots"...i.e. the full width banners, but it doesn't appear to be the case.
No idea why some are still appearing for some search phrases, but if they all disappear then we are certainly going to get a bump in visitors....my best guess is about a 3% for #1 in true SERPS, but some of that traffic could convert very well :)
It is too early to get accurate numbers yet....give it a couple of weeks and then the real value of not having premium listings will be easier to measure.
I am coming back to adwords after a few months of organic SEO only. Adwords kept running but I didn't really bother with monitoring the performance .. it was way offtrack .. so I will login to adwords every couple of days now :).
1) I have same confusion as dmorison #10. Some one clarify please.
2) I see my adwords listing on top slot in my niche where premiums used to be. Looks great .. curious to see how it will make a difference with actual sales.
Jaski
Top 2 spots used to be known as premium listings and were sold o a CPM basis rather than CPC.
These have now been STOPPED.
However this does NOT mean that top 2 spots will dissapear, all that will happen is that high performing adwords ads from the right will be promoted up top.
It is quite obvious that this has stopped, when doing searches such as:
"buy smelly socks for my grandmother" brings NO ebay or amazon results :)
hope that clarifies matters.
Shak
Based upon what rules?
In some cases I see them getting bumped up top....in others they don't?
Can someone explain how the AdWords bidders get the old premium spots? It clearly is not consistant?
Then if the CTR increases as a result of the promotion, it stays there; otherwise it drops back down again to where it was before.
Competitors varying their bids etc can pull you back again too of course.
For some daft reason the powers that be at google want to keep the exact algorithm determining the 2 top spots a secret.
The formula seems to be in flux right now, as I've got ads with high CPC/CTR not in premium position (and number one), and ads with average CPC/CTR in premium position - which just doesn't make sense.
It is possible for the number 2 ad to meet the requirements, and the number 1 ad not to meet them. If the number 1 rank ad doesn't meet them, then no one gets the premium position.
What I mean is; although Premium Listings are being discontinued; will we still see the 2 highest ranking AdWords being displayed at the top, in full width, and with a different background colour?
Can someone explain how the AdWords bidders get the old premium spots? It clearly is not consistent?
To the first question, the answer is "Yes, but not always". There may be two, one, or no AdWords ads there, depending on the circumstances
The best information I have says that the algo which sends ads up top looks at actual CPC and CTR, with CTR carrying more than 50% of the weight. There is also an additional 'performance bar' which ads must meet in order to Go North. This is the reason why there are searches for which no ads are sent to the former Premium spots: no ads have met the performance bar.
Because it is based on math, it is a 'go' or 'no go' situation. In this sense it is completely (read: mathematically) consistent, although I can certainly see where it is hard to predict.
With all that said, I'll keep my ear to the ground - and if I'm able to learn any additional details, I'll certainly pass them on.
AWA
for example, after i raised my cpc, the guy on the number 1 adwords spot went to the #1 premium spot and me to #2 premium spot.
after i lowerd my bid the guy is back in the normal adwords spot and me too. i repeated this proces 5, 6 times and every time it happened. i'm pretty sure of this, but confirmation from awa will of course be more creditable.
If there are measures, such as the 'prefomance bar', you mentioned, can you shed any light on this?
I also recently found another problem with the system due to a new competitor. Our ad has been #1 and in the premium position for months.
A new competitor came along, put all their minumum bids at $50. Although, they aren't paying over $2 per click as all they have to due is beat us by 0.01. This makes them number one due to the rank formula. However, since their ad doesn't meet the CTR criteria, they are on the sidebar. Our ad meets the criteria, but because it's now number two, won't be shown in the premium position.
If I raise our price, I can make us number one, but we'd be paying 10times our current price, but because they would drop to number two, they would be paying a much lower price as they'd only have to beat the competitor in ad 3, and not ours.
Of course, if I could find the magical number, I could make them pay $50/click, and we'd not change as we'd be beating competitor 3, but finding this number is pretty difficult and easy to mess up, thus causing us to severly overprice our ads.
I'm not sure of the best solution for G for this, as we have a claim to be a premium positioned ad as we meet the criteria, but we're not technically in the number one rank, so I can see G not wanting to leapfrog someone like that.
Maybe introducing a max bid scale where if the top bid is $2, then the max is $5, and if the top bid is $5, then the max bid would then be $10 or something.
Any suggestions or comments on this issue would be greatly appreciated.
eWhisper
I come back from vacation and find my PET TOPIC is being discussed.
The mystery of premium placement continues!
I guess we just need to figure out what the additional performance bar is, although I'm at a loss as to what quantitative stuff there is beyond CTR and CPC.
hmmm....maybe G is eavesdropping on our conversion stats?
eh?
Sorry AWA, I warned you about another conspiracy theory lurking on the horizon ;)
-c
One of my ads has been in premium position for months with a consistent average CTR of about 30%.
A competitor jumps in with a higher max bid and I fall back down again, and we both sit on the right.
Surely Google is trying to maximise their effective CPM, but 30% CTR at 20p CPC is much better for Google, than 2% at 21p CPC... (as their bid would be 1p higher than mine)
Doesn't make sense.
CPC performance obviously depends on your average position. It's easier to get a CTR of 5% in position 1 than position 8.
The performance bar is probably a transformation of your CPC into "CPC all other things being equal" so that all ad performances can be compared to each other regardless of average position.
If there are measures, such as the 'prefomance bar', you mentioned, can you shed any light on this?
eWhisper, I'll certainly see what I can find out in terms of additional details. Just to set expectations, a few of my regular 'sources' are still visiting family in distant locations. So, I'll post again when (and if) I have more info. Likely to be a few days, minimum. ;)
BTW, I'll also pass on the interesting scenarios mentioned by both eWhisper and chrisk999.
AWA
A side bar -- I thought that position in the sidebar was determined by CPC*Clicks (=revenue). If this is correct, your competitor (with higher bid but lower clicks) will eventually fall below you on the side bar. Not true?
let me see if i can do math right now and quickly toss out an example, sometimes my math is off, so someone feel free to correct anything.
rank is determined by max cpc x ctr.
Actual paid cpc is determined by what cpc you need to pay to have a 1pt higher rank than the competitor below you.
bidder 1: 10% ctr, $1 max cpc, rank=10
bidder 2 5% ctr $3 max cpc, rank=15
bidder 2 will be in position 1. However, bidder 2 will only pay $2.01 (5% ctr x $2.01 cpc= 10.05 rank) for the click.
Now, in the extreme circumstance that I posted above, if they can maintain a 1% ctr (so their ad is not disabled) with a max cpc of $50. Their bid rank is 50. Even if we had a 10% ctr (10 times higher than the competition), we'd have to have a max cpc of $5.00 to tie their bid rank of 50. In this example, if we bid $5.01, we'd be in the number one position, but would pay $5.01 per click as we need all that to beat them in the rank formula. If they managed a 2-3% (still well below ours), suddenly we need to pay $10-$15/click for #1 position. To actually tie them with even a $2 bid, we'd need a 25% CTR, which isn't going to happen for this KW as its fairly broad.
Since I know our CTR and CPC, and that since they are not in the premium posiiton, therefore their CTR is not above 5% (the guestimated minumum ctr for premium position), and I know their max bid is $50, I can also figure out that they aren't paying more than $1 a click right now, so their max bid is way out of line.
Why not just promote the top 2 ads to premium slots automatically, with a min ctr threshold to maintain quality?
-c
BTW, We have one KW with a 1.1% CTR that is in premium position with actual CPC paid of 11 cents. If CTR is so heavily weighted as some claim, how can this happen? (We have 8 competitors for this term)
The performance bar is probably a transformation of your CPC into "CPC all other things being equal" so that all ad performances can be compared to each other regardless of average position.
Maybe SlyOldDog is on to something.
-c
