Today, we are introducing a new bidding option called preferred cost bidding -- a feature designed to help you save time while achieving your advertising cost goals more consistently. Instead of setting a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) bid, you can set a preferred CPC or CPM bid that represents the average price you want to pay.
And the water gets a little more muddy.
This new wonderful tool was never intended for affiliate marketers. It was always targetted directly at the big companies who still haven't figured out that adwords shouldn't be used for pure branding purposes.
Those big companies have big budgets, but dont' really know how to utilize adwords to increase their profits. Think about it. Big corporations are run by grandpas who never grew up with the interent. They still believe you can't make money on it, but since their competitors advertise on it, they must have to as well.
So good work google, you do a great job of focussing on your big accounts and giving them whatever they want.
Am I close?
LOL
"Big corporations are run by grandpas who never grew up with the interent."
This is both ridiculous and revealing.
"Am I close?"
Yes, to becoming blind from fear of change.
It has been a pretty cushy set up for tv and radio stations for years.
I agree, big companies have deep pockets and sometimes pay for ads resulting in a negative roi. And that is definitely hard to compete against as an affiliate. But G didn't create that situation nor does it cater to it. In traditional mediums, a small one-man affiliate could never hope to sign a contract with an ad firm (or tv network or newspaper or radio station) and spend money even if they wanted to... now, an affiliate can start at $1 a day if they want - no barrier to entry. And they can reach out to any audience, including online, radio, mags, newspapaers, tv and more. And, since relevance and quality matter, it's an easy thing to find an angle, like features and price comparisons, that people search for, that merchants themselves can't provide as well as an affiliate can. So I continue to assert that adwords has swung the door open for affiliates to compete head-to-head against the super big guys and GET YOUR ADS SHOWN. This was not possible years ago. And the bidding feature added to G, that we're discussing here, gives no advantage to anyone because they're big or have deep budgets.
gives no advantage to anyone
No advantage to anyone except Google.
