Okay,

I've been running a set of campaigns for about 3 months now consistently. On average I've been paying about .30 to 35 per click for all of my keywords. Well, all a sudden this 2 weeks my click prices have started to decline.

Daily CPC prices

1-Feb tue $0.35
2-Feb wed $0.37
3-Feb thu $0.20
4-Feb fri $0.19
5-Feb sat $0.18
6-Feb sun $0.20
7-Feb mon $0.20
8-Feb tue $0.20
9-Feb wed $0.19
10-Feb thu $0.20
11-Feb fri $0.19
12-Feb sat $0.17
13-Feb sun $0.17
14-Feb mon $0.18
15-Feb tue $0.19
16-Feb wed $0.11
17-Feb thu $0.08


Can anyone explain this. I've not done anything differently in my account. Everything has been the same for the past 3 months.

You should try sorting keywords by number of clicks, then see which keywords were getting most clicks at high CPC. Then compare them with their performance for the last week.

Taking average CPC is probably not a good idea. If you go to the keyword level then you might find the reasons. Perhaps your competitors stopped advertising, perhaps your Quality score improved (or whatever Bing Alliance calls it).

Yeah, checked that already. Everything is the same. I dont have many keywords in the ad group anyway. So I can tell there's been no change in the small amount of keywords I have there. Its just seems I'm getting a discount or something.

Enjoy it while it last's... for as long as it last's Are you receiving more traffic as a result of your savings?

Yes, I'm receiving more traffic because I can run longer in the day. I usually have a budget set of 100 dollars per day. So keeping with that same budget, I get more clicks and more conversions now and everything is more and more profitable. I'm loving this!!

Not a PPC guru but perhaps a major competitor pulled out of that niche?

Could be, but i'm gonna enjoy this while I can. Hope this happens to you guys as well.

I moved all of my campaigns over to Microsoft Ad Center about six weeks ago and I have been back and forth with a rep trying to find out how to lower my bid cost's as far as optimizing the performance of my campaigns or something.

The point is, there is an algo but Microsoft doesn't offer any clues, I'm told to keep raising my bids and I will see more traffic. I go on to explain that my visitor value doesn't allow me to raise my bids but so high before I go into the red.

Microsoft Ad Center is a different beast altogether but they do admit to having some type of "quality score" just not very forth coming with it.

It could be adcenter optimizer which I think analyzes your campaign and can lower cpc because of a great performing campaign. If you have been running for months then its a proven performer.