Enhanced Campaigns Countdown – CPC and Mobile Bid Trends

On the 22nd of July migration to Google AdWords enhanced campaign will begin. During the transition process things are going to change, however, some trends are clearly visible to marketers.

CPC has begun rising

Tablet CPC are now closing in on desktop CPC for the first time in the last two years. With the two inextricably entwined in the Google AdWords enhanced campaign this trend will continue. Some companies have already seen an increase of almost six percent CPCs across all devices.

Tables were lagging behind desktops, but the gap is narrowing now. Both tablet CPC and mobile CPC are increasing slowly. However, after July 22 when all will be forced into enhanced campaigns this number will grow.

Google had seen a steady fall in CPC rates in the last two years. This was due to the fact that mobile and tablet traffic had increased considerably and on both these devices CPCs are traditionally lower than desktops. However, organizations have noticed that CPCs have now stabilized and will begin to grow year-on-year from July 22nd onwards.

Mobile Bid Adjustments or MBA

Advertisers who made the transition to Google AdWords enhanced campaigns learnt that the MBA suggested by Google for their campaign was the same for all of them. Adobe discovered that almost 90 percent of Google mobile bid adjustments were set at ?20 percent or 0 percent.

Google MBA are based on what similar advertisers bid on mobiles compared to other devices. However, individual campaigns differ and therefore suggestions made by Google need not necessarily be right for specific campaigns.

Adobe did a test to find the ROI with the Google suggested MBA in a campaign and then contrasted the finding with their computed MBA using their own algorithm. The test ran for two weeks on Google suggested MBA and then another two weeks for Adobe’s own MBA.

Adobe found out that mobile ROIs were lower on average than tablets/desktops when Google suggested MBA was used. This clearly points to the fact that Google’s MBAs are way too high and should be lowered.

Ideally it would be nice to have a 100 percent ratio between mobile and tablet and desktop. However, bid adjustment complicates things for advertisers as advertisers not only have to consider the bid, but also the MBA to make the most from a search campaign.

Companies feel that there will be sort of mini-war to build the most accurate algorithm. Without a good algorithm enhanced campaigns will be difficult to manage and will be less efficient.

Watch this space as we will continue to bring you all the new developments in this exciting chase to bring out best algorithm.