Should I bid aggressively for a new campaign?

bid aggressively

[redwolfhit]

Hi all,
Since google uses quality score for ranking and cost per click. It seems that high quality score can result in decent position with low CPC. We all know that Quality score is a function of historical CTR,quality of landing pages, keyword relevance and etc.

Is it better off I start off bidding very aggressively. Higher positions generate higher CTRs. So if I start off with a high bid and achieve a top position, IĄŻll create a history of high CTRs. In time, IĄŻll be able to lower my bid (maximum cost per click) and still achieve high positions and traffic volume. Is that true? I really want to do some research about this kind of bidding strategy, but I am lack of data now and it will be more objective with different data. Could someone share some data with me?I don't need the exact figure of every bid of certain keyword, what I need is just a time series data with how much spent for a day and how many clicks received accordingly during a span of time (a quarter,half year or longer). I will post up the results found from the data if I can get some. Thanks!

[Rehan]

What is ideal is to create ads that achieve better CTR than other ads in the same position, because CTR is normalized for position when QS is calculated [webmasterworld.com].

For example: If your ad gets 5% CTR in position #2 while other advertisers are getting 10% CTR when they are #2, you will not get a very good QS and you will not see your CPC drop. If your ad gets 5% CTR in position #5 while other ads are getting 2% CTR when they are #5, you will get a great QS and you should see your CPC drop and/or your position rise.

Write great ads that get clicked not just because of their position, but because they are more interesting to your target audience than your competitors' ads. Oh, and choose your target audience carefully.

[redwolfhit]

Thanks Rehan.
I basically understand your point. It seems that google doesn't care the historical keyword positions. Does it mean that no matter how bad historical positions my keyword is I still can get a high QS if my keywords have high relevance with my ads and more targeted. If so, can I start off bidding conservatively to test conversion rate and then decide to raise bid or not according to coversion rate.

[JS_Harris]

To sum it up your add needs to go for the click. Ads cleverly designed to draw attention but not get clicked so that they can enjoy hundreds of thousands of impressions for free still exist. Since nobody gets paid on those they get priced out for lower conversions as mentioned above. Concern yourself with CTR first, pricing second or you'll pay more.

[edited by: JS_Harris at 9:24 am (utc) on Mar. 13, 2009]