@gatormark
You can technically have a bidding war even if you can only submit one bid.
The definition of a bidding war is pretty straight forward:
A bidding war refers to a circumstance in which two or more prospective buyers of a property compete for ownership through incrementally increasing bids.
source: [
investopedia.com...]
Without incremental bidding there can be no bidding war. Also remember that bids are kept secret until the end. A late arriving participant can't simply place a bid higher than the current highest bid. So no you can't have a bidding war in first price option.
Unfortunately, this method requires many bidders for the “war.”
Your intuition is good here, yes many bidders are good in fact essential, but that is simply describes high demand and increased demand === higher prices.
This makes me think of one reason where a first price auction is better than second price auction. When there is only 1 bidder, admittedly this is an edge case, in the first price auction the winning bid will be the price submitted whereas in second price auction the winning bid would be a penny (or what ever the price increment is). So in an extreme low demand scenario first price auction may provide a better result.
@Lisa01
i don't get why my CTR has halved
Low demand impacts not only price but the quality of the ads. Under high demand prices are pushed up and thus the ads shown need to be of good quality that is have a high likelihood of being clicked, thus the ads are more targeted. Whereas in low demand market, when prices are very low, advertisers can show spammy ads, where the buyer doesn't care about who sees the ads and isn't looking for a high CTR, think earwax ads. As a result you get low prices, CPC, and low CTR. Once demand pickups again ahead of Valentine's day you should see the quality of the ads increase with CTR and CPC, and of course RPM.
