If you can hit the magic bullseye its really expensive for someone else to knock you off & equally expensive to claim the top spot from someone else.
So lets say there is a competing ad that has been running for 100,000 impressions and gotten 20,000 click-throughs with a max CPC of $0.50 and they are actually paying $0.20 because the CTR is so high.
Approximately what would the AdWords estimator project that you would need to bid for the top spot?
Would it assume the "average" ad gets a 2% CTR and look at the current top bidder and the CPC currently being paid and suggest $2.00 CPC for the top spot since the current bidder is pulling 10X the average CTR of would it suggest $5.00 since that would be 10X the max bid of the current owner of the top spot, again assuming a new ad would get a CTR of 2%?
Then lets say you were determined to take over that top spot. How much history would it take to build up a CTR history to take the top spot?
Lets say you bid $2.00 and 25 of the first 100 people clicked on your ad so you had a 25% CTR but it was only for 100 impressions. Does it matter that your ad only had 100 impresions whereas the other ad had 100,000?
If we assume the existing top spot dropped to 15% CTR and then had an effective CPM of $75.00 ($.50 per click (the max bid of the existing bidder) * 150 clicks in every 1000 impressions) that you had to top if you wanted the number one spot, and competing ad dropped to second place after you hit the 25% CTR, would you then claim the top spot and pay $0.30 per click or just over it? ($.30*250 clicks per 1000 impressions = $75.00 CPM)
Assuming everything (match types, etc..) was equal and only the bids differed, how much history would it take to claim the top spot?
I was prepared to take a loss to grab the top spot, so I bid max CPC of $25.
Since Google stats are behind, I don't know the actual CTR it took to hit the top spot. However, I was running real time tracking software, so I can make very close guesses on the clicks it took, and semi-accurate guesses on the CTR.
Initial 5 clicks - ad in position 3.
10 Clicks (5% CTR), ad in position 2 but no one in premium position (this just seemed very odd).
12 Clicks, ad is position 1, but no one in premium (as expected due to my not having the qualifications to be in premium, but my bid rank was good enough to be first, thus making it so no one could be in premium position)
17 Clicks - ad in first place, premium position, no one in 2nd place (again - odd placement). However, I couldn't believe 17 clicks got me to premium position.
35 Clicks (7% CTR) - paid CPC started dropping. Competitor 1 in premium 2.
End of day 1 (so 'semi-official' statistics) ad still in premium position 1, total 59 clicks, 6.5% CTR, & $8 CPC.
Over time, the CPC continued to fall as the CTR went up. It should be noted, I was willing to lose a lot more money than I did for this type of bid stratedgy - be careful overbidding for posiiton.
So basically skibum was asking how much of a "record" for certain KeyWords you have to have before your good CTR comes into play?
C.K.
Is this not true anymore?
Cheers,
Neil
I read on this forum (sorry, can't remember the thread) that your CTR only comes into play after you have had 1000 impressions. Before that you take the average CTR for all bidders on the particular keyword.
That info comes from this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...] (message 7)
and one other I can't find at the moment.
As you start to acrue your first 1000 impressions, your own CTR starts to count as well as the default CTR. So if your default CTR is 2% and after 1000 impressions you have a 10% CTR, I'd expect Google to assume at that point in time that your CTR is 6%.
I posted results of a real example, although, the example doesn't make complete sense to me. The keywords should have needed many more impressions than they received to reach the top position. I'm really not sure why that happened so quickly - and makes me wonder if Google has tweaked something in the formula.
This issue still confuses me somewhat though. For several reasons:
1. I was under the impression that for the first 1000 impressions you just get the default CTR, not a combination of your CTR and the keyword average.
2. Or, do you mean that after the 1000 impressions you get a combination of your CTR, and the average. If so, why? What's the average got to do with things now, or is this just because Google now looks at your own CTR and the average and gives you the combination for the first 1000, then if you maintain your high CTR (10% in your example) for the next 1000 then you actually get your 10% (or at least this is more important than the first 1000, and CTR is weighted with history so you're running at 8% or something)
3. This doesn't really seem to apply to my ads anyway. I have some keywords with the minimum bid, a very good CTR and less than 1000 impressions which seem to be pretty high up.
This might seem like wanting unnecessary detail but I think it's pretty important. I use a combination of keyword expansion tools and dynamic keyword insertion. Essentially, I want the title of my ads to match exactly the search if possible (and less than 25 characters etc..).
So, I create long lists of 'blue widgets supplier' 'blue widgets store' etc... rather than just 'blue widgets'.
'blue widgets store' may take up to 3 months to get 1000 impressions, so I get the default CTR for all this time (I'm assuming my actual CTR will be better than the default). But if I just ran 'blue widgets' it may only take 3 days for 1000 impressions so I get my own CTR quickly (but probably a little lower CTR as the ad title is less specific).
It'd be interesting to know exactly how the CTR history works, how each block of 1000 impressions is weighted over time, if it instantly gets updated etc...
Any ideas?
Cheers,
Neil
