Avg. CPC Below Min. CPC!

How could that be?

[bigdealioo]

What does it mean? (And no... the min. CPC was not raised - it stayed constant).

[Pengi]

I assume that it is not old data - i.e. that you did not pay for clicks before the minimum bit was increased.

As I understand it, the actual CPC you pay is the minimum amount you would need to pay to obtain the ranking given for your keyword. This will depend on the other sites bidding for you keyword and could be less than the assigned minimum bid for your site.

Another possibility is that you are receiving clicks from the content network. This can still happen even if your bid is below the level needed to enable your ad to show on the search network.

[bigdealioo]

"As I understand it, the actual CPC you pay is the minimum amount you would need to pay to obtain the ranking given for your keyword. This will depend on the other sites bidding for you keyword and could be less than the assigned minimum bid for your site."

Can anyone confirm this?

[bigdealioo]

"As I understand it, the actual CPC you pay is the minimum amount you would need to pay to obtain the ranking given for your keyword. This will depend on the other sites bidding for you keyword and could be less than the assigned minimum bid for your site."

Can anyone confirm this?

[Green_Grass]

It is quite possible to pay less than the bid price. The bid price is the max you will pay, not the price you will always pay.

[bigdealioo]

You missed the topic grass. My avg cpc is not just below my bid - it's below the MIN BID! And that's what makes it so weird and screwed up.

[Green_Grass]

"it's below the MIN BID!"

You mean some keywords are inactive because your bid is below the min bid? Inspite of this you are getting impressions and clicks? Yes, it happens sometimes.

Maybe you are loking at avg. figures which include content + Search figures . This can be much below the min(Search) bid. It frequently is, for me as I bid much lower for content than for SEARCH. Even if you donot bid seperately, you will not have to pay as much for Content as you do for Search.

[mike_ppc]

Depends how much you consider Min Bid to be. Now you can pay even less than 0,05/click. And if it's from Content, it's a different story

[bigdealioo]

jizzzz. what planet are you guys on? are we speaking different langauges? In an adwords account every keyword has its own specific Minimum Bid. That's the Min Bid I'm talking about.

OK? Let's try this again.

Avg CPC for keyword.. OK? With me?
Min Bid for same keyword? OK

I have a situation where Avg CPC < Min Bid. Min Bid has never been raised.

[mike_ppc]

If you refer to the estimations in the "keyword estimator tool", I don't trust a figure there. They have proven to be very far from reality. And I couldn't find that Min Bid anywhere else in the interface.

[buckworks]

How many clicks are involved in the oddity you're reporting? Dozens of clicks? Thousands? Statistical anomalies tend to even out in large data sets.

There's a possibility that the situation you're describing is happening for the nicest possible reason: your ads are better than average so the ranking formulas are giving you credit for a better clickthrough rate than your competitors. That can reduce the amount you have to pay per click.

[wrgvt]

I have popular keywords that Google makes me have a minimum bid of, for example, 40 cents per click. My average CPC for these keywords is 23 cents. My guess is their own history with these keywords across all accounts has a low CTR, so they set a higher minimum bid. Since there's less competition for these keywords and I can keep a high enough CTR to keep them active, I pay less than the minimum bid. I have several examples of this in my account.

[bigdealioo]

wrgtv got the same situation as me. Adwords is RETARDED. They're tripping over their own made up terms such min. bid which they create to squeeze out maximum dollars from advertiser and which has 0 to do with "user experience" and "do no evil" BS. Big middle finger to you Google.

[aeiouy]

I was confused where you were going, but I suspect that it has to do with their wacky algo for pricing. I have seen it too where I might need 30 cents to get an active keyword but then the average ends up being like 23 cents. Have you tried inching down your minimum bid to see if it stays active?