Reduce Max CPC, maintain position

What happened to the AdWords Discounter?

[robertskelton]

According to Google, their AdWords Discounter:

"monitors your competition and automatically reduces your actual cost-per-click so you pay the lowest price possible for your ad's position on the page."

I have always found this to be the case, and have been appreciative of this feature.

However, lately I have had a number of instances where I have reduced my Max CPC to significantly lower than my current Ave CPC, and maintained ad rank.

To put it another way, I have reduced costs while maintaining ad rank, something I shouldn't be able to do because the AdWords Discounter should have me paying the least possible for that position.

My only guess is that the Google Budget Optimizer tool is responding to the changes I make, by adjusting the bids of others....

Rob.

[inasisi]

If you are using Budget Optimizer then I am not sure whether you reducing the Max CPCs would have had any effect at all, as Google might have then modified it.

I didn't know that people were using the Budget Optimizer still. Given the rash of bad experiences that people were initially having, I had thought it would be given a quiet burial soon.

[edd1]

I would say don't use the budget optimiser and see if it improves things. Changing your maximum CPC automatically changes other variables and affects others too so nothing is ever simple.

[robertskelton]

I wouldn't touch the Budget Optimizer with a 10-foot pole. I don't use it.

What I mean is, other people bidding on the same keywords might be using it - and therefore when I drop my max cpc, theirs might be dropping automatically, letting me maintain the same position for less cost.

It's the only explanation I can think of...

[HitProf]

The BO's help says you can't change the budget and max click prices but in fact you can. Has been changed since its introduction. (I'm using the BO on 1 or 2 campaigns).