Reduced the CPC - still being charged the higher cost?

[JenniferL]

Hi everyone! I have a few campaigns going, and being on a limited budget, I have to watch them like a hawk, and reduce or raise the cpc as needed. Well, this morning I reduced the cpc to keep the costs down - but I am still paying the original cpc. I know there is a delay of around 3 hours, but this was 10 hours ago and no reduction. I did call Adwords customer service, but all she said is that it must not be updated yet. Will I still have to pay the higher cpc even though I reduced it? Thanks!

[skibum]

If you had bid prices defined at the keyword level, make sure you reduced those prices. If you have an ad group with 15 keywords and the CPC for each keyword is set at say $5.00 and you reduce the max bid at the ad group level to say, $0.50, the max CPCs at the keyword level $5.00 will still be what AdWords goes by, at least that was our recent experience when lowered bids did not seem to reduce the prices we were paying.

[JenniferL]

Each ad has only 1 keyword, but being a gift-related site and it being close to Mother's Day, the costs were becoming astronomical - so I reduced the cpc for each ad.

[vibgyor79]

Sometimes there is up to 24 hour delay before the new max CPC kicks in. Not sure why this happens though.

[internetguy]

Only ONE keyword for each ad? Are you getting any sales?

[AdWordsAdvisor]

JenniferL, just a couple of quick notes regarding your original post:

...this morning I reduced the cpc to keep the costs down - but I am still paying the original cpc. I know there is a delay of around 3 hours, but this was 10 hours ago and no reduction. I did call Adwords customer service, but all she said is that it must not be updated yet. Will I still have to pay the higher cpc even though I reduced it?...

Firstly, as you noted, there will always be a server delay between the time you make a change, and the time it is fully updated throughout the entire server network. The delay can vary, depending on volume, etc.

Most often an hour is a safe rule of thumb, although there can certainly be exceptions. So don't quote me. ;) (And note that this delay is a slightly different animal than the 3 hour delay that one may expect for their stats.)

Now, on to your real question:

...but this was 10 hours ago and no reduction.

When you are viewing your stats, be aware of your date range setting. And be aware that the smallest period of time for which you can check is 'Today'.

When you are set to the date range of 'Today', you are viewing stats from just after midnight of the current day to roughly three hours before the time you are checking. So let's say you change your Max CPC at 2:00 in the afternoon, and then immediately check your stats for 'Today'. You'll be seeing stats for roughly midnight to 11:00am of the current day. In this case, there will be no stats including your current Max CPC reported yet at all.

Now, if you check 10 hours later at a minute before midnight, you'll be seeing stats from midnight to 9:00pm.

The important thing to note in this scenario is that the stats you see now include 14 hours when your Max CPC was at the higher figure - and this will of course be reflected in the stats for 'Today'.

However if you check for the date range of 'Today' on the following day, you will see that all of your clicks are below your lower Max CPC.

Hope this makes sense. Kinda has my head swimming just trying to explain it!

AWA

[donb01]

I may be wrong, but isn't the actual figure an AVERAGE CPC? That would mean that even though you have lowered your cost per click, you still had many clicks at a higher cost, and it will take some time for the lower cost clicks to drop that average.

AWA's note about setting your focus on Today will deinately help that, because then you are averaging over a much smaller period. You may have to wait till tomorrow to see the results. You can always pause your campaign for part of today to control your spending, and then turn it back on tomorrow to see if your Avg. CPC is lower....

[AdWordsAdvisor]

I may be wrong, but isn't the actual figure an AVERAGE CPC?

Exactly correct, donb01.

Thanks for adding a piece of information I failed to make clear. So the Average CPC includes 14 hours in which the Maximium CPC was at the higher rate, in my example.

AWA

[JenniferL]

Yes - our sales are excellent. They are extremely targeted plus I have much better control over my costs and click through rate. Every time I added more than one keyword to an ad, one of them performed poorly therefore dragging my click through rate percentage down. Thank you Adwords Advisor - that makes sense to me now!

[Chardona]

The problem is you can only look at stats one day at a time and there is also a lag of two to four hours before your stats are updated

If it was under 26 to 28 hours ago, the stats will show an average click charge from what they were before to what they are now, which can be confusing

There should be a Current Click Charge column

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[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 4:49 pm (utc) on May 7, 2004]
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