Max CPC and Avg. CPC

[Jon12345]

Why is there normally a large discrepancy between Max CPC and Avg. CPC? I would have assumed they would be close in value but often I get something like this:

Max CPC $0.30
Avg CPC $0.09

Any ideas? Is it something to do with the position of your next competitor?

Jon

[mcavic]

Yes, Adwords won't charge you the maximum unless it's necessary to beat your competitors by a fair amount.

[Googlor]

This is a term specific and maximum CPC thing. For example the guy that puts a maximum CPC for 0.10 under "life insurance quote" he'll probably get all his clicks at the maximum CPC. Then again if he was using the same maximum CPC of 0.10 under "dirty underwear" he probably wouldn't see anything more then the baseline 0.05.

So what does this mean, it means currently under your keywords the fair CPC is 0.09. Now this wouldn't mean you're ranked #1 on these terms are the CTR also applies now if your seeing a low ranking and you aren't getting your maximum CPC I would look at rebuilding your ad to get more traffic as the better your ad the more your CTR is and the more traffic you get.

Hope this helped.

[FromRocky]

Max. CPC is a price that you is willing to pay while ave. CPC is the ad performance price of your next low competitor. They should be different except when both are at the bottom. Also, you can't control your competitor's ad performance and therefore you can not fix your ave. CPC. You can set Max. CPC though at any value you want.