Category: Google

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:

1. Clicks have dropped
2. Impressions have dropped
3. CTR has improved
4. Average cost per click has increased about 5%
5. Cost has dropped by about 1%
6. Average position has increased by marginally
7. Conversions have increased
8. Cost per conversion has gone down
9. Conversion rate has gone up

For advertisers with small ad spends and budget limited:

1. Clicks have gone up
2. Impressions have gone up
3. CTR has declined
4. Average cost per click has gone down about 3%
5. Costs have gone up
6. Average position has decreased significantly
7. Conversions have dropped
8. Cost per conversion has gone way up
9. 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.

 

It may still be too soon to know what impact the removal of the sidebar ads from Google will have for AdWords advertisers, but here’s some of the data from the number of clients that we manage for the last month.

Client Results Not Limited by Budget – Large Ad Spends
Average clicks dropped 1.2% – some as much as 10%
Average impressions dropped 3.2% – some as much as 8.39% drop
Average cost per click increased 3.5% – some as much as 6.37%
Conversion rate increased by 14.1% – some as much as 44.95%
Average position dropped by 2.49% – some saw a 8.9% drop

Client Results Limited by Budget – Small Ad Spends
Average clicks increased by 18.8% – some by 59.8%
Average impressions increased by 23.7% – some by 42%
Average cost per click decreased by 7.5% some by 20.2%
Conversion rate decreased by 30.3% – some by 73%
Average position dropped by 16.2% – some by 27.6%

I expected to see a stronger increase in the cost per click and not a decrease. For lower spend accounts the big change was drop in ad position which caused a drop in conversion rate.

Come back on Wednesday for more details on the impact of Google’s removal of the right sidebar ads and what it means for you the AdWords advertiser.