Continued from Monday.
The full impact of what happens to AdWords advertisers is not known yet, but the data is flowing.
For now it appears that for advertisers not limited by budget:
- Clicks have dropped
- Impressions have dropped
- CTR has improved
- Average cost per click has increased about 5%
- Cost has dropped by about 1%
- Average position has increased by marginally
- Conversions have increased
- Cost per conversion has gone down
- Conversion rate has gone up
For advertisers with small ad spends and budget limited:
- Clicks have gone up
- Impressions have gone up
- CTR has declined
- Average cost per click has gone down about 3%
- Costs have gone up
- Average position has decreased significantly
- Conversions have dropped
- Cost per conversion has gone way up
- Conversion rate has gone down
Clearly for those with a limited budget the landscape of AdWords has changed and there is increased pressure from large advertisers wanting to fill the top spots. It may be that the drop in conversions is due to the fact that small budget programs now are showing in the off hours versus in prime time impacting click through rates and conversions.
I’ll know more as we get more statistical data, but for now, large advertisers won’t notice much of a change, but smaller advertisers with limited budgets will have to increase the cost per click to be more competitive now that ads only appear at the top and the bottom of the page at Google.com.