Lower CPC mystery for same keyword

Same keywords, Different creatives. Why CPC is different then?

[Ravikumar]

I'm bidding on same set of keywords (KW) using two creatives. (Creative A and B). The CPC of Creative B keywords are lower than Creative A even though CTR of Creative A is higher than the other.

This is a 4 week moderated/capped campaign. Help me understand why there is CPC discrepancy between the same KWs for 2 different creatives. My media agency couldn't explain this phenomemon.

[nyet]

We have experienced the same thing over the last 5 or 6 weeks. I think that the new Budget Optimizer and the fact that Google now factors in AD CTR for CPC and rank are all related.

Our CPC went up drastically after we changed all of our creatives (which we would never have done if Google had informed us of such a major algo change). And still experience higher CPC with ads which have better CTR.

I think Budget Optimizer has (if I am correct) thrown a big wrench in to things. Even though we have NOT opted-in it looks to us like we maybe paying a price.

[dave741]

If one of the sets of keywords is younger and the kw are broad matched, then they may behave like exact match and this means higher CTR, lower CPC...