we are seeing similar trend, looking for a alternative which works and is cost effective
The declining profitability of Google Adwords
31–40 of 104 posts
Re: The declining profitability of Google Adwords
#32Costs go up because of competition.
Costs go up because Google gives a $ 100 for every new Adwords customer, this inflates the prices.
Costs go up because there're more ads, not just on the right side.
People are less likely to buy when there's a recession.
Re: The declining profitability of Google Adwords
#33I'm actually quite impressed that people earn money from these advertisements. I have never clicked one of the adverts, unless it was the top result on a Google search for the thing I was actually looking for. It's like a natural instinct to ignore the ads. With the rise of addons like AdBlock Plus, I think it's inevitable that this Ad-venture (pun intended :P) will decline, and cease to work, until a new medium or m…
Your average Internet user has no problems clicking on Adwords ads. If anything in ecommerce they are just as likely or more likely to click an ad than an organic listing.
Re: The declining profitability of Google Adwords
#34What are the best alternatives to Google Adwords in terms of paid advertising?
Re: The declining profitability of Google Adwords
#35The OP probably needs to optimize his ads (i.e. tune them) and the conversion funnel. In my five years of working at Google as an AdWords manager (I don't work there anymore), I've seen cost-per-click and bids rise consistently especially for Google search. This has a lot to do with competition and limited real estate. However, Google maintains something called Quality Score which is analogous to page-rank that determines the bid required for an ad to show. Quality Score is based on the keyword - ad text - landing page relevance. With a high Quality Score you can get clicks for a much lower cost. Some experiments put this at about 5% per unit of quality score change (Quality score is on a scale of 1 to 10).
Low quality score is also a reason your ad might not show even if there is no competition – Google assumes that the relevance of the ad is low, and tries not to show irrelevant ads to user, even if it means not showing any ads. Of course this is not fool proof, but that is the idea in general.
Getting a click is only half the story. Actually getting the user to convert and buy your product depends as much on your ad as it does on your site. Is your keyword related to your ad? Does the ad landing page offer what the ad text promised? How easy is it for a user to buy your product or, convert? How many steps does it take to get to your thank you page? Is your sign up process too long? Most people tend to focus too much on bids and ignore optimizing their ads to improve relevance of the keywords to ads and relevance of ads to their site. Doing this can help increase Quality Score which significantly brings down cost per click. It comes as a surprise but small tweaks can make huge differences - and increasing bid or cost per click is not the right answer in most cases.
Plug: I'm one of the founders of Optmyzr (http://www.optmyzr.com) and we offer optimization services and automated tools for optimizing AdWords campaigns.
Re: The declining profitability of Google Adwords
#36I'm wondering if it's got something to do with saturation on the demand side. I'm going to take a (roughly) economic angle...
When AdWords first launched, it wasn't (necessarily) a standard for online advertising, and especially for advertising generally. As more businesses consider it to be part of basic strategy, the cost of your bid goes up to remain profitable.
The previously obtained performance is the anomaly - it's a first-mover advantage on a new technology. You get more bang for your buck because you're making use of an asymmetry in the market-place.
The phenomenon that's occurring here is commoditisation - Adwords is well-known and well-used; it's a standard. The competitive advantage that comes from its use has finished.
Re: The declining profitability of Google Adwords
#37Seems like the article is only showing half the story. Costs are going up which means increased competition. Increased competition will mean your ads are running against more competitors. Reason for fall in click-throughs could be under-optimized ad's losing out to competition's ads. As for conversions. Looking at the table plan site I feel overwhelmed. If this is where the ad's are taking users I think it is fairly…
I agree; the site for the software looks terribly out of date, which in turn doesn't instill confidence in potential customers.
Updating the site would be his best investment.
Re: The declining profitability of Google Adwords
#38I'm actually quite impressed that people earn money from these advertisements. I have never clicked one of the adverts, unless it was the top result on a Google search for the thing I was actually looking for. It's like a natural instinct to ignore the ads. With the rise of addons like AdBlock Plus, I think it's inevitable that this Ad-venture (pun intended :P) will decline, and cease to work, until a new medium or m…
Watch an average user browse the web and use Google to make a search.
They will click on the top ad result returned if it is vaguely relevant and not bat an eyelid.
Average users do not even know those yellow sections or the right hand section are ads.
The natural instincts of geeks The natural instincts of average users
Re: The declining profitability of Google Adwords
#39It is hard to split out the effects that are leading to a tougher Adwords market in general and this particular campaign. One thing we have noticed about Adwords is that longer campaigns are being ran as essentially residual income with maintenance the more they decline. Thing like bids, keywords, ad text can progressively put you in a worse place than the competition left unchecked. I addition over the years we are…
> People are used to the instant gratification from a web app
Which people? The 1% inside the tech bubble?
Outside of the tech bubble people still download stuff. And smart phones like Android and iPhone with their downloadable apps don't really condition people to use web apps.
If you want to make bold statements about the software market take a look at the people outside of your tech savvy peer group.
Re: The declining profitability of Google Adwords
#40Seems like the article is only showing half the story. Costs are going up which means increased competition. Increased competition will mean your ads are running against more competitors. Reason for fall in click-throughs could be under-optimized ad's losing out to competition's ads. As for conversions. Looking at the table plan site I feel overwhelmed. If this is where the ad's are taking users I think it is fairly…
I agree; the site for the software looks terribly out of date, which in turn doesn't instill confidence in potential customers. Updating the site would be his best investment.
Although I agree updating the site would be good, that's not really to the point of the post, which is about click-throughs _to_ the site.