Clicks Down However EPC Up

Is this the Smart Pricing effect?

[OptiRex]

Further to my earlier post regarding 9th February I have been monitoring my earnings so far today and I would like to know, quite simply since I don't do Adwords, whether Smart Pricing automatically increases the bid the advertiser pays when the advertiser is receiving less traffic from their targeted web sites?

My EPC jumped 20% yesterday compared to a very consistent first 8 days (within +/-5%) and it's continuing today at +30% compared to Feb 1-8.

Maybe I should've posted this in the Adwords forum however I wondered if anyone else had noticed such an effect for their niche targeted site. I wouldn't have thought this "effect" would occur for more generalised sites however I have no idea whether I'm facing into the wind or not:-)

I'm not writing about traffic fluctuations, earning ups/downs etc, I simply want to know if this may be a Smart Pricing effect or possibly something else?

[europeforvisitors]

whether Smart Pricing automatically increases the bid the advertiser pays when the advertiser is receiving less traffic from their targeted web sites?

No. Smart pricing can't increase the advertiser's bid; it can only subtract discounts from that bid.

[OptiRex]

No. Smart pricing can't increase the advertiser's bid; it can only subtract discounts from that bid.

Ok, let's assume a day when the clicks are reduced whether through less visitors or someone outpricing an exisiting advertiser, does Adwords alert an incumbent advertiser that referrals are down advising how much to increase their bid to ensure they're on my pages?

[europeforvisitors]

Are you talking about contextual CPC ads or site-targeted CPM ads? With contextual CPC ads (normal AdSense ads), advertisers don't get to control where their ads appear, except by using the blocking filter to exclude certain domains.

[alika]

does Adwords alert an incumbent advertiser that referrals are down advising how much to increase their bid to ensure they're on my pages?

No. Adwords does not tell the advertiser where the ads are being shown -- it only shows Search Total and Content Total. Content Total shows the aggregate metrics of the ad's performance from ALL the Adsense publisher websites where the ads are shown. But Adwords does not provide the advertiser the individual list of websites where their ads are shown -- even in CPM ads (though with CPM, the advertiser can go to a screen listing websites fitting in that particular keyword that advertisers can select, but Adwords does not report how many clicks/impressions have been received from a selected website).

Hence, Adwords does not alert advertisers to increase their bids in order to remain visible on a particular website. In many instances, the Adwords advertiser may not even know that their ads are appearing on your site - unless they inspect their referrer logs.

The only alert Adwords give is when a keyword becomes inactive for search (haven't seen a notice ever of a keyword inactive for content) and the advertiser is urged to "improve their quality through optimization, delete them, or raise the keywords' maximum CPCs to the minimum bids indicated. (Raising the bids will activate the keywords.)"

[OptiRex]

Thanks for the information, I assume by this:

the advertiser is urged to "improve their quality through optimization, delete them, or raise the keywords' maximum CPCs to the minimum bids indicated. (Raising the bids will activate the keywords.)"

Therefore if traffic were down for whatever reason and their competitors had already raised their minimum bids to remain visible then this would mean an increase in the minimum EPC?

Thanks.

[alika]

This notice only pertains to search - the ones on the Google site, and not to Adsense publishers. I haven't seen a notice that pertains to content (maybe others have seen an alert pertaining to content?). Note that Adwords advertisers can put different bids for search and content. I almost always bid 50% lower for content sites -- e.g. if my max for search is 0.10, my max for content is 0.05

[OptiRex]

I almost always bid 50% lower for content sites

Is that because you have proven to yourself that the search results are more accurate or derive better results than content?

I assume that whether it is a niche site or an MFA site then the content bid remains the same?

I reckon I'm beginning to uderstand the Adwords method a little better now...it's about time!