Adwords Cost Doubled After Dropping Content Match

[dndco]

I recently took over the management of a clients AdWords campaign. After setting up proper tracking and doing some analysis I decided to drop them from Content Match beginning this month.

I just ran a report for the 1st - 4th and was expecting to see a significant decrease in their spend. To my shock, the spend has managed to match the average spend for that time period from last month when both Search Match and Content Match were in place. I did a quick analysis of the same time period going back to January and every month prior Content Match accounted for more than 50% of the spend.

So essentially what the reporting says has happend is that the impressions and click throughs on the clients top 5 - 7 keywords has magically DOUBLED since Content Match was dropped.

Am I crazy, or does this seem way out of whack. Anyone having or had a similar experience?

[RedWolf]

Are they at or near their daily budget? If so, then the content was taking up the clicks and they were being slowed on the search network to make up for it.

[dndco]

As a matter of fact they have reached their budget every day this month. As was the case when Content Match was in place in the past.

Looks like you hit the nail squarely on the head.

And it looks like I have a little more work cut out for me. I need to tak a second look at Content Match conversions vs. Search Match conversions.

Is there way to look at the keyword data from a Content Match or Search Match ONLY vantage as opposed to the total of the two?

Perhaps just setting up a mirror campaign and flag the respective Match off and the run one for a time and then the other for a time and compare conversions?