1. Minimum bid for premium area (or however the yellow area is called).
2. Sudden half-related or unrelated ads appearing above, filling in the spot for you.
Reaction to 1.
Why we have to pay the predetermined price for premium spots 1-3? Isn’t algorithmic calculation for lower positions enough to make it fair? I think that is unfair, especially if there are no competitors around.
Reaction to 2.
There will always be companies like Google or Microsoft that have huge budgets and can afford to spend that money on broad match (including expanded) which Google is keeping in reserve and pushes out when we start reducing our bids. While ensuring Google gets the CPC for certain positions that seems to be predetermined these days, this ruins the quality that Google keeps swearing into.
Everything was much better about year ago or so, including paid search results.
Then again, I have some clients who are 'ego bidders' and who insist on being in the top 3, no matter what it costs. I tried over years to convince 'em, but it just didn't take.
It used to be that only the first three results got passed around to some of the search partners, like AOL. I'm not sure if that's still the case - we've seen a big reduction in AOL traffic, but that might just be because fewer people are using AOL. And it never converted all that well for us anyway. It would be interesting to know though if there's some minimum position we have to target to be included in most of the major search partners.
I believe that people have become accustomed to running their eyeballs down the whole list of ads, because so often they will see ads that are not relevant, or poorly written, or just not what they want.
That's where writing some truly compelling ad text can out perform the top spots, and kick everyone else's behinds.
Still, the case of “ghost” ads showing only when there is a “gap” between #1 and #3 or #4 is something that I don’t think is right.
In this way, Google ensures it gets its $0.95 (for example) per click on average for position #2, jeopardizing the quality of results.
Both premium area price and “gap” thing are bullish approach.
In my experiece we dont generate near as much volume when we reduce our position.
When you end up in the 3-8 positions do you find you lose out on alot of sales? Should I not care about losing potential customers and only care about having a higher ROI?
Well I'm always chasing ROI, of course. The lower positioning works for some markets, but not all. All you can do is test it. In some cases, the CPCs were so much lower that we were able to increase our daily budget, meaning more coverage, and making it up that way.
Google Analytics has a nice feature that shows you how your ad has performed in various positions, so you can see which has been the most profitable for you.
Again - if you're going to bid for the lower positions, you *really* have to have some good ad text going for you; you have to stand out from the crowd. Pay attention to the other ads that are there - this is not somewhere where you want to copy someone else, you want to get their attention. If there's some funky DKI generalized ad several spots above you, you can still win the day if your ad can convince the user that YOU have what he really wants.
