Looked at a campaign today and we are getting charged more for content clicks than for search clicks.
Max CPC is set to around $0.50
Average search CPC for the ad group is around $0.10 but goes as high as $0.30-$0.40 for a few similar keywords in the group.
Average content CPC is $0.17
Do we have to break out the higher priced keywords, put them in separate groups and have different max CPCs so that we don't get charged more for content clicks (that don't convert as well) than search clicks?
Yes - sometimes the avg CPC of content clicks are more than that of search clicks. But thankfully, the conversion rates are high enough to compensate for this.
I'm not sure why this happens though - perhaps your CTR is higher than your competitors in the search network (and lower than your competitors in the content network). I heard that the payouts of the AdSense publishers are linked to the conversion rates. Perhaps the overall conversion rates of your content partners are higher than average?
>>> Do we have to break out the higher priced keywords
Not a bad idea. Worth a try.
>>> we don't get charged more for content clicks (that don't convert as well)
If you are sure that the content clicks are not converting well, then I would suggest that you create 2 seperate campaigns - one targeting search and the other targeting content network. You will be able to control the CPC and cost/conversion better.
It turned out that the majority of their content clicks were coming from a few authority sites (and they really are authority sites). However, the conversion rate was much lower than search.
They weren't using G's tracking system, so maybe other people were converting from these authority sites, and the discounter was working in reverse due to how other sites were faring.
Skibum,
Your "a few keywords of $0.3-$0.4" were clicked more often than in the content sites comparing to the searches.
