Is quality score strong enough to lower a very high bid to near .01?

advertisers who set unrealistic max cpc... so i assume

[wedouglas]

Do you think it is possible to obtain a quality score such that even if the person below you is bidding something like $30, you will still be paying .01 or near it?

I'm struggling to compete with an affilaite. I can bid $100 but will never outrank him. My only guess is that his max cpc is very high in compbination with a good CTR. I cannot get my ad into the blue box because his already advertises for sponsor.com and that means I'll never be able to reach his CTR.

I have tried putting up ads on different domains for $1-2 max cpc hoping to raise his costs too high, however his ad never budges. My guess is that he still is paying a very low cost given the high volume of the keyword.

I'm now about to try setting it to something like $30 max cpc. Do you think this will have any effect on him? Could someones quality score be so high that it dominates all bids by a landslide?

[wedouglas]

I don't know how someons quality score can be so high. I just lost my spot as we speak. %50 ctr 8000 clicks $100 bid. Both sending to the same url.

What am I missing here about this rank equation.

[jtara]

How do you know his CTR? Or is 50% your CTR? That's an incredibly high CTR, though I had one that high once for one morning, a couple of weeks before Christmas. It seems it was legitimate, as I reported it as click fraud and Google said no, it wasn't. The conversions also suggest that it was not click fraud.

But I find it difficult to imagine that this click rate could be sustained, unless you are giving away $100 bills. :)

I just played Chicken on the other side of this and won. The other advertiser had (IMO) a much lower quality ad - very generic, not product-specific. It had been playing in the blue box, though, because he was willing to bid high. I finally decided to bid high (a bid that would make the prospect most unprofitable if actually realized) and got the blue box back. Presumably, the other advertiser dropped-out, as my CPC has subsequently dropped in half.

But it is rediculous that advertisers should have to play this game of Chicken. It's not a rational pricing model.

[robjones2]

As well as getting into a bid war with him, you could also try adding variations and mis-spellings of that keyword - that might get you much lower cost conversions.

for example, if the $30 keyword is "widgets", you could add:-
widgits
widgetts
wijjits
etc

as well as:-
widgets in my-town
blue widgets
blue widgets in my-town
etc

Unless your sure the $30 keyword is worth it to you, i would let the other guy waste his money instead.

Also remember, that its not just bid price that determines the ad position. Look at:-
a) including the keyword in your ad headline and text
(that will also make it show bold); and
b) make sure your landing URL is fully optimised with lots of relevant content related to that keyword

[wedouglas]

my CTR has been %50 for a while. it is very highly targeted and gets a lot of searches.

It is a good keyword and the thing is, there are only two of us. so only one of us shows and we pay a really low amount, around .01.

That is why I am bidding $30. I know he has to be bidding around $100 because I am still outranked with my high CTR and at $100.

Even if his isnt $100, it has to very high to counter a $100 bid from my ad with its high CTR. I'm just wondering if he is really paying what I am bidding. I would imagine hed lose about $1500 a day at that price, but if he is still up, he couldn't possibly be losing that. Only an idiot would lose $1500 a day on something that pays $25 per sale.