I have a link direct to a merchant and another link to my landing page. Together they are both served 100% of the time, which compels me to believe that my direct link ads are actually showing. However some of these ads aren't getting clicks (historically quite strange) despite them being served. Does "served" now only mean that it was served to the preliminary auction and then I lost the preliminary auction and it was dropped? Or does served actually mean served and shown on Adwords? If the latter is the case, then the new affiliate policy hasn't affected anything since every single one of my ads is showing at 100%. Improbable.
Migriffin, I'm afraid there isn't really enough info here to answer your question with confidence, but here is my best guess:
I think you must be referring to ads in two different Ad Groups - and each of the Ad Groups has only one ad in it. Right? In this scenario, each ad would be shown as serving 100% of the time.
Why? Well, the 'percent served' figure is designed only to show you how multiple ads in one Ad Group are doing - compared to one another - as they rotate.
On the other hand, if you have only one ad in an Ad Group, it is by definition showing 100% of the time, since there is only the one ad to show. This is the way it has always been, BTW, and is unrelated to the policy change.
Does that make sense? If not, I'll take a second shot at it. Or someone else will. ;)
AWA
... doesn't make sense.
I don't think so. Let's say "100%" is measured the time which Google is going to select one of your ads to show. Any time when your ads are slowed down due to low daily budget, CTR or other reasons will not included in this 100%. If the ad with your own landing page is selected, your ad will show. In case of the direct-linked ad was selected, it will go through a pre-auction. If your ad has the highest Ad rank, the ad will show, if not, no show. However, the ad selection between your two ads is still counting. As your data shown, the direct-linked ad was selected 60% of the time but the ad is not necessarily shown all of these times. It can be possible your direct-linked ad no show at all.
If you start these ads at the same time and two ads are showing all of the possible times, the page impressions of direct-linked ads will be 50% more than your own-landing URL ad. If not, you can estimate the number of time your direct-linked ad was turning down due to a lower ad-rank. However, I believe they're not started at the same time.
For example:
Someone types in to search "widgets" ten times.
Assume that your daily budget are high and CTR of the keyword are over 0.5%. Google will select one of your two ads 10 times:
Your own-URL ad: Selected 4 times (40%), 4 page impressions, 1 click.
Your direct-linked ad: Selected 6 times (60%), 1 page impression, 0 click. (5 times were turned down due to a lower AdRank comparing to other direct-linked ads).
Hope I have answered your question.
FromRocky
Actually I have two ads for each ad group. One directly to the merchant and one to my landing page. The only difference between the two ads is the the display URL and destination URL. The direct link will be 60% served, my landing page will be 40% served. Together 100% served...
Hmmmmm.
migriffin, I'd like to look into this a little more deeply - so I'll post again after I've had the chance to track down the right folks. ;)
AWA
I would say this is a bug in the adwords algorithm that probably should be changed. If CTR is calculated on ads that never show, it is a useless parameter for deciding what ad to post and the ad rank.
I would really like to see Adwords try our direct link to merchant ad first and if it cannot post due to a higher bidder allow us to show another landing page link for that same ad. Is there any chance that this might happen one day? I don't want to delete all my direct links until I know.
Thanks for your help!
...What I'm saying is that 100% served does NOT mean 100% served, it just means 100% attempted for preauction.
Migriffin, this didn’t sound right to me at all, so I've gone to the source, and run this past several folks in engineering.
To make a long story short, everyone has come back to me confirming that it doesn't operate as you've described above. Instead, if the direct to merchant URL ad doesn't make it through the preauction (as you have called it), then no impression will be counted.
Of course, this leads to the question of what is happening - and the best way to figure this out is to look at the actual account.
So, if you were to write in to AdWords support from within the account, and give your email a subject line such as 'ATTN: ADWORDSADVISOR - By Request' I'd be happy to have the same folks look at the account and figure out what's up. If you do decide to write in, please be sure to specify the campaigns and Ad Groups you're wondering about.
Thanks! I'm really curious on this one myself.
AWA
