Adwords "suggested bid" versus Adsense click value?

Why are these values so very different?

[Christopher C]

Sorry if this has been asked and answered a number of times already, but why can these values be so different?

Some things I can think of:
1) Revenue is shared between google and the publisher
2) Google now adjusts PPC revenue based upon the content of the publisher's site & the expected conversion

What else am I missing? I'm noticing some major discrepancies (~$1.80 publisher, versus ~$19.00 for advertiser suggested bid).

Thanks,
Chris

[irock]

What else am I missing? I'm noticing some major discrepancies (~$1.80 publisher, versus ~$19.00 for advertiser suggested bid).

Where did you get these values?

[Powdork]

Where did you get these values?

Most likely from being an advertiser and a publisher.
It could be that Google thinks your traffic is unlikely to convert to the business objective.

[Christopher C]

adwords suggested bid = ~$19 for keyword, site where I'm running the adsense average click = ~$1.8 after about 1 month.

In fact typing this I can already think of one more issue:
3) adwords broadmatch = ~$19, I'm not sure which terms matched within are at what bids.

As an aside, the ads being targeted through adsense are what I'd expect. Namely, "buy widget", "cheapest widgets", etc.

[Mark_A]

Christopher C the difference between how much an advertiser pays to Google for an Adword advert and how much Google pays a Adsense republisher to serve it represents Google's gross income (sales income) on that single or series of transactions in which Google uses a sub publisher or agent for the adsense display.

There is nothing suspicious about it :-)

Google must cover costs like everyone else .. it is a "for profit" organisation not a charity :-)

[Jenstar]

Another thing to consider is how AdSense decides what your page is about.

"Widgets" could be a $19 keyword ad
"Fuzzy Purple Widgets" could be a $3 keyword phrase ad.

Even though you say your page is about widgets and deserves to show those juicy $19 keyword ads, AdSense could decide it is not only about widgets, but about fuzzy purple widgets specifically, resulting in ads worth only $3 instead of $19. And if the split is 50/50 (it isn't but using that figure because its easy ;) ) that means you would be paid $1.50 for any click on the ads on that page.

Something else to consider is that not all advertisers display their ads on content targeted sites, so it is also possible that none or only a few of those advertisers with the $19 Widgets ads have opted in to content sites.

[loanuniverse]

I think Jenstar is on the right track. Any particularly competitive widget category will have keywords ranging from the very expensive to the very cheap. I think is an error to assume that the split is like that. While it is possible that it is, some people have reported getting big EPC before {certainly not me, but I know that they are there}.

[Christopher C]

Good points :)

Taking a closer look, the google ad results are a bit different. Smart adwords tracking I'm guessing as the top 2 results on a google search for "keyword" point to the same sites that are consistently being displayed as top to on my site. It's a different ad display however changing to "geotargeted keyword".

I picked up this site at about the time that google was changing their policy towards PPC & expected conversion. It's a shame as I would have liked to see what the data was like before the change. This lack of solid tracking information is what I'm finding the most frustrating in using adsense. (This is the first site I've really focused on using adsense as the source of revenue with).

For those of you adsense pros, how proactive are you in manipulating the way your site's are indexed and blocking out lower paying clicks? Certainly my site is focused first on quality content for visitors, but I'm sure with some minor content and structure modifications I could change the way it's indexed.

Thanks,
Chris

[jomaxx]

Where exactly is this "suggestion" coming from? The AdWords tool I am familiar with lets you put in any dollar value and it gives you some back-of-the-envelope estimates of what kind of traffic and costs you can expect.

I don't see any suggestion, nor do I see any way of getting a handle on what the average click for a given keyword costs across all advertisers. There is an initial value that shows up when you first get to that page, but in the testing I just tried it was hugely inflated.

[edited by: jomaxx at 3:38 pm (utc) on April 28, 2004]

[Sharper]

Also, isn't the "suggested" bid that Adwords gives to start more of a high-end bid, not an average bid?

Also, since some advertisers will opt-out of content ads, I've noticed that content ads tend to give higher positions for lower bids.

Both of those would tend to lead to much lower "average" prices for the publisher.

Only way to figure it for sure would be to bid on your own obscure page, then click it and check the channel results.

[Jenstar]

>>and blocking out lower paying clicks?

It sounds good in theory, but you could find that you are blocking lower paying ads resulting in showings ads that are worth even less. Google is in it to make money, and they are going to display the highest paying most relevant ads. If you are blocking ads in hopes of showing higher paying ones, you could result in having an even lower EPC.

And don't forget the same company that is bidding $3 on fuzzy purple widgets could be the same company bidding $19 for widgets. But since you cannot block only certain ads or keywords from a single company, you could be losing the potential to display those $19 ads on pages that AdSense decides is relevant enough to do so. Companies are rarely bidding on one or two keywords or keyword phrases. Many are bidding on thousands of keywords and keyword phrases.

Blocking ads can result in higher CTR, but its when the ads are completely irrelevant to the page (ie. showing ads for hockey sticks on a page about gourmet cooking). It could still result in displaying lower paying ads though.

[Christopher C]

>>isn't the "suggested" bid that Adwords gives to start more of a high-end bid<<
Yes certainly, but it is a starting point and it also gives you a rough maximum. I'm not certain, but I'm guessing that at least one advertiser must have bid somewhere around this figure for it to be offered as a suggestion. For our adwords accounts, sometimes we are indeed bidding pretty close to the suggested figure but only on some (and the most competitive keywords). Beyond that, with the conversion matching that google does now the bid doesn't neccessary match what you actually pay.

>>Google is in it to make money, and they are going to display the highest paying most relevant ads.<<
True, but they're looking at it from a macro perspective while the individual publisher is not (i.e. google has to balance the happiness of both the advertiser and the publisher). Ideally the goal I'm sure is to nudge publishers into creating higher conversion pages, but then not every page is a "widget review" page.

>>since you cannot block only certain ads or keywords from a single company<<
Hmm, another good point.. So proactive adsense targeting is more about manipulating how your pages are indexed. Is it too soon to ask whether people have had any success with this? For instance increasing keyword density on your pages for stuff like "review", "buy", "cheapest", etc?

[jabberwookie]

AdSense seems to be moving in a quasi Pay-For-Performance direction with the recent changes...

[jomaxx]

I'd be salivating too if I thought advertisers would pay $19.00/click on my site, but I think the bottom line is that that number is probably way above what the average click costs for that term.

Even if there really is someone who bid $19.00, that advertiser probably pays way less than that per click, on average.

[Need3lives]

Also, keep in mind that even if the top bid is $19, a typical AdSense ad shows 4-5 ads at a time. It is possible, if the advertising base is not very deep, that the 4th/5th ads could be at a significantly lower rate. Also, since Google ranks ads based on CTR as well as price, this could have an additional compounding effect. (i.e. the guy paying $19 has a very targeted ad w/ a low CTR, the guy in the 4th position has a very high CTR, and as a result, he only pays a few $).

[icedowl]

Blocking ads can result in higher CTR, but its when the ads are completely irrelevant to the page (ie. showing ads for hockey sticks on a page about gourmet cooking). It could still result in displaying lower paying ads though.

I just unblocked all ads that I had blocked to see what happens. I did save the entire list if I need it again.

[europeforvisitors]

So proactive adsense targeting is more about manipulating how your pages are indexed. Is it too soon to ask whether people have had any success with this? For instance increasing keyword density on your pages for stuff like "review", "buy", "cheapest", etc?

Tweaking pages for AdSense is a crapshoot at best. Plus, even if you find a way to boost your CTR or EPC by playing around with keyword density, placement, etc., who's to say that today's successful reverse-engineering technique will work tomorrow? Why not simply create more content instead? When everything else is equal, more pages should equal more impressions, more clicks, and more income.

[Powdork]

I just unblocked all ads that I had blocked to see what happens. I did save the entire list if I need it again.

Let us know how that goes icedowl. I did that a couple weeks back. I also removed a lot of poorly performing pages in the same timeframe. my earnings went way up but it happened closer to when I removed the pages.
I still have my list but haven't felt the need to use it though.