Is a minor difference (or no difference at all) between the MaxCPC you set, and the AvgCPC you have on a keyword an indication that there's competition over the keyword, and that Google had to "squeeze" almost everything it can outta your MaxCPC for your current Ad Postion?
Is such a situation a good indicator to upping the MaxCPC a bit?
(following the line of thought that there are "areas" of bids that could be "crowded"... like lotsa competition around 0.20$, but once your'e over 0.25$ you jump over to a better Ad Position, with less competition)
What do ya say?
Thanks ;)
you can learn that for super tight ad groups, with tight matching, short keyword lists, very good ads and high ctr, that your quality/relevancy factors can move you up the ladder and your span between maxcpc and actualcpc can stay or grow large (example, $1.50 maxcpc and $0.48 actualcpc).
you can learn that if you're in the top spot, you can raise your maxcpc bid higher and higher and the actualcpc won't change.
you can learn that observeations are very complex because the landscape is always changing - dynamic bidding (whether manual or automated), dayparting bidding effects, sites being worked on, competitors coming and going, continual recalculations of ctr and relevancy [i think it's a relative scale, not absolute, so you relevance can change as your competitors change their landing pages, stock, content, site bulk (other content, PR, etc)] and more.
of course, there's lots more to learn from observing statistical trends, but generally it's the same thing - the system works mainly as G says it does with an occasional blip here or there - you can spot those blips when AWA posts and resolves a legitimate issue we bring up and substantiate.
if you use your reading glasses and not a microscope, you never stop learning and discovering.
That was a very good and useful answer - exciting. We know deep down that this is what is going on but find it hard to keep an aye on these sorts of dynamics.
I'd like to know if you are managing a small number of campaigns and if you have managed to automate detecting any of these patterns.
Great question also!
The "blips" are not occasional - in fact they're more of a rule than the exception - and somehow they all happen to go into the direction of charging you higher actual CPC than the "Discounter" dictates.
Nope, I don't automate detection of the maxcpc / actualcpc span, but it is something that's very easy to see in the G interface, so I watch it. I check statistics like these daily and keep a database system of my own to track trends based on collected daily data. But my style is to watch daily and try to react no more than weekly at first, then no more than monthly after things have stabilized. Think of me as an attentive soup cook, watching constantly, but adding ingredients rarely. Trends take time to materialize and I've often seen trends that seem to be forming, later reverse course and never really materialize. Since I am bidding for roi (not position), volume is somewhat dynamic at times, but profit % stays fairly even. And as time passes and my ads ctr's improve and my landing pages are modified to the better, volume grows as my ads move up.
As far as automation (detecting patterns, adjusting bids, tactics like bid spanning and bid blocking and bid underbumping), I think they are all a grand waste of time. I bid for roi, not position. Then I work on everything else but bid amount to try and gain position - these things include tight ad groups, high performing ads, improving landing pages and more. I don't chase bids, I park my butt on a bid that's got a healthy roi given my expected (and then known) conversion rates and then I work on ad fundamentals to try and gain position and therefore, more traffic.
I have many campaigns where my bid maxcpc hasn't been changed in well over 6 months, some more than a year. I'm a steady-stater, so to speak - and I don't react to minor fluctuations because I consider them mostly noise.
Some find my approach boring, but it's profits, not automation or analysis, that push my buttons. Micromanaging data and microanalyzing it isn't my approach, there's much more important work to do just a little higher up than that.
As a matter of approach, I resist the temptation to use tools that automate - I still haven't even seen the adwords editor - I just work in the online gui. This sounds very backwards to most, but I'll leave the nervous chasing to everyone else. I have tried many automated tools, but it's in my distant past because I found that I'm much more succesful without them partially blinding me to the most important aspects of online advertising.
I am the tortoise and am thoroughly amused by the frenetic activity of the plentiful hares in this never-ending race.
[edited by: RhinoFish at 2:39 pm (utc) on Feb. 13, 2007]
Before I re read this again, let me just say that our main AW team member took 3 trips to the pub to convince him to switch to AW Editor. He now works 7 times faster and cannot imagine life without it. I know this might not suit your approach, but I can strongly reccommend that you take a good look at it. it's an amazing tool. Simply wonderful.
i do use some tools, my favorite keyword mixer comes to mind, but tools to speed altering settings don't have any appeal to me because i'm not tacking with every change in the breeze. setup time is a factor and is where my friends may convince me to use the Editor - but the time it takes to setup a campaign is mostly work i do completely outside of adwords, landing page analysis, keyword generation and segmentation, ad writing, competitive analysis and much more. so the need to speed my interactions with the adwords interface is almost non-existent. might need 4 trips to the pub...
