The Future of Adword.A Possible Rant.But True None the Less

Adwords, PPC, CPC

[rankmaster77]

I know this has probably been discussed, but I am curious to know how other forum members feel about where the future of Adwords is headed, especially when it relates to CPC and Keyword Bidding.

I've been managing an account for a little over 2 years, with a very healthy budget for a small business, it exceeds a little more than 1 million dollars.

When we first started there were very few people in our space and naturally as the business grew, more competitors came in and began bidding on our keywords, the price of the KW slowly began increasing and obviously today the price per KW has increased significantly, even though we have maintained and progressively increased our CTR, spend lots of cash and convert.

So what can we look forward to with Adwords as we head into the future? Its seems to me that as we and other businesses continue to market on the web, the space is going to get limited and the barrier to entry will get more difficult with time.

Question: How much is enough? And what will the market be willing to pay for space on Google in the future? Will small businesses be squeezed out by the bigger guys eventually? Will Adwords be a relevant avenue for small to medium sized businesses?

As more markets become saturated I dont see how Google can manage this unless they put some controls on costs. What i do see is an opportunity for other search engines to offer better, cheaper space on their serps.

Again, I am sure this has been discussed before but I really would like to hear what others think. Personally I see a very difficult road ahead for businesses and just like SEO, which has already begun to fade and is becoming more difficult by the day, I believe Adwords is going to get just as bad or even worse....

Thoughts anyone?

[jimbanks]

out of the box Adwords is just plain horrible for first time advertisers, but it's better to have it, than not have it.

Google are not mis-representing what they sell. They make it really easy for a first time advertiser to serve themselves some ads. Chances are people will read a little bit about what to do, will follow the suggested path of keywords and price, which are based on the existing auction that is going on at the time they start.

What happens on Google will always be where the battle will start, I just think with video, mobile, social, site speed, analytics, lifetime value, sales funnels there are better uses of budget than trying to squeeze more out of a model that I think we all agree could be better than it currently is.

Maybe we agency/consultant people are the idiots for even trying to put forward opinions.

The original question was about Google sustaining prices, but Google don't set the prices, the advertisers do. If you sold something totally off the wall and there was nobody else that did, you could and would get super cheap traffic, if you set your bid prices in that region.

I've NEVER set a bid price at the suggested rate Google put down, sometimes it's a lot more, other times a lot less. Occasionally, the price I end up paying is what they suggest, but I never start at that point.

There are numerous places where you can serve ads in rotation for 10 cents a click, some for even less than that, but quality and quantity of traffic will always mean that scenario won't play out. The minute people "find" a new source, they will blog about it. tweet about it and the 10 cent clicks become $2 clicks and advertisers vote with their feet.