Company A has a much lower budget, is typically in the 4th or 5th spot, and accrues 10 times the impressions for a particular keyword than the other company. Both companies are set up for broad (and I guess extended) match and neither of them use negative keywords (to my chagrin). So I guess the question is: Why does the company with the lower daily budget get more impressions? An answer to this would increase my understanding of this program by leaps and bounds. Thanks for any and all assistance.
i would assume that the CTR is lower due to it's lower ad position on the page. therefore can get many more impressions to use it's daily budget.
obviously the higher up the listing, the more likely the user is to click on your ad.
Could it be something to do with the ad copy on the ads? is one much better than the other?
Or is the ad copy and CTR so good that the max cpc is much lower than the other advertiser, meaning it can get less expensive clicks?
landing page influencing ad quality scores? i've never heard of this one before.
could you point me in the right direction so i could read up on this, or sticky me with some info on it please.
much appreciated
briggidere
Is this the daily budget in the campaign?
>is typically in the 4th or 5th spot,
And company B is.....
Does the daily bidget match Google's suggestion?
The bigger company may have many more keywords that eat up the budget.
Company B is usually in the 1st or second spot
Daily budgets/cost/impressions/CTR from yesterday (cost based on adgroup, impressions and CTR based on single keyword)
Company A: $100/$25.10/1754/0.3%
Company B: $650/$136.42/133/8.2%
What Briggidere says makes sense, about the CTR and all, but with both accounts using roughly only a quarter of their daily budgets, you would think that they would still get the same impressions (or at least I think that). Unless the threshold for CTR vs. Daily budget is a solid number rather than a percentage of daily budget or some kind of equation where you divide one by the other, but that doesn't make much sense to me. Backwards really if that's the case, Google wants more money right? So keep rolling the ad that gets the clicks.
It irks me a little since I think if I could get Company B up to the impression count of Company A I could increase profit by 1000%. So this is important. Thanks for all your help so far. I hope this controlled experiment helps us all understand the system a bit more.
briggidere
Do you realize that by restricting the account to US only that you do not get any visitors from AOL
Who needs 'em? ;-)
Seriously though, we have to restrict to the US because we only sell to US clients. Were we to advertise globally it would accrue thousands of unwarranted clicks. Thanks for the tip though, it is certainly good information to have...
company B has been set up in Adwords for at least 6 months longer than company A.
Both companies are set up for broad (and I guess extended) match
These two statements stuck out for me.
Broad match is a lot more complesx than it first appears. At one point in time if you used broad match then your ad would show for all searches containing your keyword or phrase all the time but then Google introduced some enhancements to broad match.
Now variations of your keywords that are triggered by broad match are held to a higher quality score to ensure those variations work for your ad text and keyword phrases. If the variations do not perform well then your ad will stop being triggered for those variations but can continue to show for other variations and the exact keyword or phrase.
Maybe since Company A's campaign in newer it is showing for more keyword variations as the Adwords system tests them our for relevancy. Since compnay B has been at it longer maybe the broad matching has "optimized" itself by this point and as a result shows for less keyword variations.
Try looking back in Company B's stats from when they first started to see if impressions were higher then.
Otherwise it just doesn't make sense. If you have a higher budget, bid on the same keywords, target the same locations, pay more per click, have a higher CTR, and rank higher then it's impossible to get less impressions.
We geotarget to the US only, and we get Adwords-referred AOL orders all the time.
The AOL proxy servers ARE located in the US, and have "US IP addresses", so it doesn't make any sense that they wouldn't be included in the US geotarget zone.
If you put any kind of geotargeting on in Google adwords they have no idea where aol visitors come from because the way aol uses proxies. So they just automaticly don't show to any aol users to solve the problem.
Do you have any evidence of this?
AWA can you comment on this.
If you put any kind of geotargeting on in Google adwords they have no idea where aol visitors come from because the way aol uses proxies. So they just automaticly don't show to any aol users to solve the problem.
This is not true when you target the whole US. This is true of Geo Targeting at a more granular like City or State.
0,3% is quite low even for positions 4 & 5. Do you have any negative kewords in place for the other company that miss in this one, causing the ad to show on many irrelevant phrases? Check both group and campaign negs.
Are your numbers form Google only, google + search, or search + content? Check wether they are the same for both companies.
Do you have different versions of your keyword (exact match) in one campaign and not in the other?
Do you have similar keywords in other groups that eat up your displays? E.g.: I've seen my Brand A Widget show up for "widget" because of its higher CTR. If so, exclude Brand brom the "widget" group.
Also: broadmatch keywords have to proove themselves for the different broad combinations. Perhaps this has not happened to your slower campaign.
Just a few thoughts. Try adwords support if you're still stuck :)
Have you gone in from an AOL account to test.
No but if you just go onto AOL and search our ads come up. You may be correct though if you are actually signed into AOL.
Check both group and campaign negs.
Check. Both the same
Are your numbers form Google only, google + search, or search + content? Check wether they are the same for both companies.
This is an interesting one and, while both accounts were just on the search network, I took one of the campaigns of Company A and took it off both search and content network and the CTR shot up to 7.5% so I think it may be a problem with one of the syndication sites. (ogletree this would back your AOL theory to a degree)
Do you have similar keywords in other groups that eat up your displays?
Another excellent point and while I don't think this is the problem it brings up a good question: When a search defaults to a certain ad in another campaign because of similarities in the keyword phrase and higher CTR (a problem I have had in the past and one that definitely needs addressing STILL Google)does the impression go to the actual search phrase or the nearest search phrase in the ad group from which the ad is shown?
Try adwords support if you're still stuck :)
Yeah. I did, and even they don't know what the problem is. Figures. I'm making progress though and thanks to everyone for their help so far.
Do you have similar keywords in other groups that eat up your displays?Another excellent point and while I don't think this is the problem ...
Murdoch,
I think this may be part of the reason that Company B gets less impressions from the same broad matched KW. Does Company B have more keywords than Company A throughout all it's Campaigns? If this is the case, then Comapny B is in fact showing for all of the same searches as company A, just that they are accumulating under a different keyword in another ad group.
... it brings up a good question: When a search defaults to a certain ad in another campaign because of similarities in the keyword phrase and higher CTR (a problem I have had in the past and one that definitely needs addressing STILL Google)does the impression go to the actual search phrase or the nearest search phrase in the ad group from which the ad is shown?
The impression will always go to one of the keyword phrases in the ad group that the ad came from.
The impression will always go to one of the keyword phrases in the ad group that the ad came from.
Thanks for verifying that for me.
Does Company B have more keywords than Company A throughout all it's Campaigns?
Surprisingly no. Company A actually has a few more keywords (really not many), which is why I do not believe this is the problem. If it was, then the keyword in question would be receiving less impressions instead of more for Company A, or at least that would make sense. Not to mention that the entire account receives double the impressions, though the big differences are in the top performing campigns. We're talking a difference of 45,000 impressions or more a week.
In any case, even if that were the problem, I don't believe it would account for the immense difference in numbers.
Briggidere,
landing page influencing ad quality scores? i've never heard of this one before.
I thought this was incorrect too until I was browsing the new Adwords help guide and saw this:
Now I really have to check this out in detail to make an educated guess. Still I'm not quite sure if this is the problem, both companies use similar methods for SEO relevancy and the like, but I'll keep you all updated.
Company A: $100/$25.10/1754/0.3%
Company B: $650/$136.42/133/8.2%
I personally think because CTR of Company A is much lower then Company B, so google need to send more impressions to this ad to at least try to fill up his daily budget to keep this advertiser keep using adwords. It makes most sense if Company A has a higher Max CPC then company B (but you did not mention about this)
Also a good way to maybe test this is to switch the ad text from company A to company B and visa versa to see what the impressions result is on this (since the CTR will change) and then see which company gets the most impressions.
Goodluck
