Changes In Google's AdWords Program

In order to become more advertiser friendly, Google is making changes to its AdWords program which will also improve relevance for users along with giving more control to advertisers. Till now, it was the maximum bid by the advertiser and the relevance of the advertisement (measured by the number of clicks by users) that was the determining factor for the position and frequency of the ads. So ads appeared or disappeared on the basis of this calculation on the search result pages (SERPs). The ads performing well used to come on top of the ones having a higher bid but not being very relevant. As a result the ads that didn't perform well were either penalized or accounts were slowed if they didn't meet the search engine's requirements. And bringing them back on the SERPs meant improvement in the quality of the ads by the advertisers.

But there is good news for the advertisers now. Google has simplified the whole process by making the ads as active or inactive. The advertisers need not worry about their ads being on hold, in trial, disabled, etc. They just have to think in terms of two states-active or inactive. This will help them considerably to manage their campaigns. Along with this, Google has also introduced a quality based minimum bidding system with the help of which the advertisers can show the ads to the visitors if they meet the minimum bid requirements of the system without the fear of being penalized as used to happen earlier for not meeting adequate quality levels based on Google's automated predictive modeling system.

Minimum bids are now determined by a Quality Score that predicts the relevance of an ad for a specific keyword. Minimum bids to a quality score wipes out completely the previous de facto minimum bids. Now, an ad with a high quality score can have as minimum a bid as a penny and for low quality score ads, the minimum bid can be as high as the previous minimum of 10 cents.

Thus the minimum bids could change over time as the Quality Score gets updated time and again. Ads doing well will find the minimum bid decreasing and the ones that are not performing well will find an increase in minimum bids.

According to Salar Kamangar, director of product management, Google, this change might benefit the advertisers and users both.

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