I know I'm repeating myself but for a few years I could very happily predict Adwords and what I would get for ROI and position. Now like many, I'm totally confused. Get this:
I've been moving some pages over to a site that the Ad Quality Score seems to like a little better.
I had gone as far as cutting one keyword list, pasting it into a NotePad document for later use and saving an empty list planning on deleting the old Adgroup.
Then I realized that the old Adgroup had been running profitably forever, had only 5% "Inactive" and all bids at a modest 20 cents so I changed my mind and re-added the words. Done this before without any other editorial changes and the keywords found their old stats and no harm was done.
This time the entire Adgroup jumped to Inactive keywords with ridiculous mininum bids like:
Increase quality or bid $10.00 to activate
Current bid: .20
Clicks______: 1,212
Imp________: 9,465
CTR________: 12.80%
Avg CPC____: .15
Increase quality or bid $10.00 to activate
Current bid: .20
Clicks______: 88
Imp________: 359
CTR________: 24.51%
Avg CPC____: .11
<sarcasm> Guess I need a better CTR - What can I do to improve it? </sarcasm>
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BTW, these were not traditional high value keywords. The prior bids were about as high as could reasonably be demanded. I competed with about a 1/2 dozen advertisers.
This also brings up the question: When are mininum bids determined?
At several possible points, it appears:
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As so many have said, this lack of transparancy and surprise is rendering many of our acquired Adwords skills useless.
If this post seems pointless, it's because I'm thoroughly lost at this point.
Israel
Aaron
