Adwords sometimes become Sponsored Links

Ever seen this?

[bnhall]

Hi - we advertise with Adwords but not with Sponsored Links. The other day, on a fairly obscure search term, I noticed our company showing in the Sponsored Link area, and no Adwords were displayed.

Did I miss this in the Ts and Cs when I signed up? Not that I mind, just curious. Or is this something G does when there are no Sponsored Links?

[huppy99]

Ditto, but I thought it best to just keep quiet! ;)

[Susanne]

Great, isn't it! I think that click through rates might have something to do with it. We have a campaign where the "hottest" ads have risen to the top, while the less interesting ads remain at their normal positions on the right hand side of the SERPs.

[Shakil]

This topic was discussed at Length at the pubconference, and in the past I have spoken to the sales people at Google regarding this.

the conclusion is based on a number of factors, which include:

1, Click Through Rate on Adwords
2, Certain Sponsored Listings remaining unsold.

Google were not too forthcoming with any specific reason, but confirmed the above.

so the anser is do not rely on it, but feel happy when it happens, as CTR is a lot lot higher on Sponsored listings than Adwords in my opinion.

Shak

[omegadm]

Shakil, do you have any figures for CTR when a sponsored match as opposed to standard Adwords?

We have seen this as well, but only for a breif time - the client had to reduce their daily spend!

[DaveN]

omegadm, if the client had to reduce their daily spend don't think they would like the 15000 qtr that googles expects you to pay up.

The way I see it is we never get the a massive jump in click throughs from the Sponsored Links when we appeared for free (from the adwords) I just saw it has been a token gesture from google, a congrats you spent £**** this month have a little extra back.

DaveN

[omegadm]

DaveN

Yes, you're right. The sponsored listing is not an option for any of our clients (yet!). That's what suprised me when it first happened - we thought the client was going to receive the 'sponsored listing' bill!

They were spending ~£30/day on some holiday terms but had to reduce it to £20/day due to other advertising commitments. It only lasted approx a week so I never had chance to measure the CTR.

Current CTR for std adwords is ~3%. Just looking for some more info on this...

Best regards, Brian

[Shakil]

In answer to your question:

We have never run Adwords and Sponsored Listings at the same time, however when we were running Adwords we were getting 7-8% CTR, upon switching over to Sponsored Listings it went to 15% CTR.

On another note, Sponsored Listings actually work out 75% cheaper for us as we have bought all invetory for 12 months, whilst competitors are playing the bidding war :)

Shak

[omegadm]

Wow - great CTR's... what industry sectory is this for?

[GoogleGuy]

bnhall, if our algorithms determine that the ad is quite useful to a searcher, we reserve the right to give advertisers a better deal than they paid for. ;) The decision is made by an automated algorithm though, I believe.

[bnhall]

GG, thanks. I aspire to have more of my ads seem this useful to your algorithm.

[volatilegx]

GG, I love it!

[vitaplease]

I asked the Google salesrep at the Pubconference what CTR rate. impression level and cost per click combination was necessary to "go up north" and his mouth twisted in irregular spasms ;).

You could always click and pay yourself through this experiment if you have enough different IP's to check with...

[bnhall]

I'm seeing this again. This is great. GG, we like this!

[Hawkgirl]

Shak said:

We have never run Adwords and Sponsored Listings at the same time

They won't let us. We've tried - but you can't run both CPC and CPM for the same keyword & same URL. You can only do this if you're running the same keyword for different URLs.

:)

We would LOVE to be able to run both Adwords and Northern Banners with the same URL on the same keyword ... ahem ahem.

[Shakil]

"Northern Banners"

now I remember where i picked that new word from :) , no wonder the staff are positive that I got drunk at the weekend.

Shak