Minimum bid dropped to $.05?

All my keywords are $.05 min now

[DrCool]

Am I just going crazy or has Google placed the minimum bid for all keywords down at $.05?

All my keywords I usually check are this way and I checked some of the historically high keywords (data recovery, casino, etc.) and the minimum for those is $.05 as well.

Glitch or golden egg?

[Learning Curve]

I guess that makes sense because they're phasing out Premium Sponsorships and Premium Sponsorships were the justification for the minimum bids.

The minimum bid was pretty stupid, economically.

Originally, minimum bids were just a way to appease the Premium Sponsors while Adwords was getting started. Now the average Adword bid is high enough that Google doesn't need the Premium Sponsors anymore. That's my opinion.

Google's waking up.

[GoogleGuy]

Arouw? <GoogleGuy yawns, scratches his head, and starts looking more alert>

:)

[lgn]

I think it was back in September, when they got rid of the original CPM adword program. I kept bugging google to adjust their minimun bids, because there was no way I was going to pay 50 cents for purple widgets, and to let the market determine prices. They refused and would not negotiate, my minimun bids.

Well it finally appears that the google marketing department finally understands the law of supply and demand.

I just added a bunch of high price keywords at a nickel a shot. Im sure I will need to pay more, as soon as the competition catches on, put its going to be close to a free ride for a while.

[feeder]

All minimums five cents? Is that it?

Google just launched a rocket.

[steveb]

It's been like this for awhile. Competitive words are a lot more expensive and have a lot more competition and many advertisers can't meet the minimum clicks.

[lgn]

The good thing about competitive keywords on adwords vs Overture is that adwords have more slots for placement.

On Overture, most results come from the partners, so if you do not make the first three positions, your click-thrus drops significantly.

On Adwords, most results come from Google, and they have 8 placements on the first page.

Since the advertisement is on the right, instead of a top down approach as in Overture, good ad copy makes a bigger difference that actual vertical placement in the right column, in generating click-thrus.

Because of this, I find that adwords is much cheaper that Overture.

[boxman]

In a way, the minimum has always been .05 -- you could create campaigns at that level, and the system would just declare that your ad would not be shown for that price at that moment. Over the course of months, however, you might sneak in for a few impressions when high-bidding advertisers are inactive for whatever reason.

My approach has always been to create ads for multiple keywords, at least some of which would spend my $5 minimum at a nickel per click. But I add other keywords with high minimums just to take whatever scraps fall.

[kila_m]

I have found during the past 2 weeks Google has dropped the high bid keywords... before they wouldnt let me advertise unless I bid around 37p.. now I get accepted for 4p.

Good news for all.. s I wasnt going to pay 37p for the keyword.

Also I noticed Google has relaxed the CTR for some keywords it was a very popular keyword and I could no way get 1% on it .. I dont know if they knew this but for 5 days now I havent got the dreaded red low-CTR :)

[andrewg]

No - this hasn't been going on "for awhile" - it was changed just over a week ago! And the people on this thread are pretty much the only people aware of the change, which I trust will be announced shortly.

Yippee! No more $0.93 minimums! :)

[GoogleGuy]

Cool..

[Clark]

I tried the darn thing a few times and could never get the minimum CTR even though you could not have a more relevant, more popular, more authoritative site for the keyword I bid on. I tried lots of different ad copy, maybe that was the problem, but no matter what I tried, couldn't make it.

[andrewg]

The change is now official, per the Google AdWords newsletter sent out yesterday. Re-evaluate your bids accordingly!

[lgn]

Hopefully, the competition will treat the google email announcement as spam. Im already saving
a bundle. My spending is down 60% for the same amount of traffic, but im afraid its not going to last.