Adwords CPC = Adsense CPC ?

Hi,

I had a few questions regarding the CPC for Adwords and Adsense.

Does Adwords CPC still matter in 2015 for Adsense CPC? Will my Adsense CPC be affected by the Adwords CPC? Eg. If the keyword Car Loans is $7.00 CPC in Adwords will that mean I will get a relevant CPC in Adsense? Or does Adwords CPC have nothing to do with Adsense CPC. I have heard many people say choose keywords that have high CPC in Adwords as that will relate to higher earnings in Adsense. Can anyone who is working with Adsense confirm if this is true. I am looking forward to everyone's opinions regarding this matter.


Thank You

First, let's get our terms straight. People interchange them (and that drives me nuts) and causes confusion. It's like calling a Pepsi a Coke. They're not the same. I'm sure people are still going to use one term to mean the other but I aim to educate and hopefully we'll all understand each other.


Adwords. That's the name of the pay-per-click service from Google. BTW, Bing has a similar service as do others but don't call it Bing Adwords because that's not what Bing calls their service.


You can use Adwords to advertise on Google itself called the search network but also on sites on their network. That's still Adwords although many call it Adsense and I think that's what you are doing. From the advertiser's side, having your ads shown on sites on the network is the display network.


Adsense is what publishers use, those monetizing their site by putting up Adwords ads.


On to your question. Now the search and display networks are very different from the advertiser's perspective. It works a lot different. Most advertisers use them very differently as well. You can't compare the networks and the click costs are therefore different, usually very much so for those reasons.


The keyword tool and the suggested bid ones sees there is for the search network only. Note it is a suggestion and based on average ad quality and to get the top position. On the display network, each site is treated differently and there are no keywords as well as other factors so the bid suggestion has no meaning.


Hence, if you are a publisher, the bid suggestion will have no meaning as well. You may have a site related to car loans and the system displaying mostly ads about car loans on your site, you will get nowhere near that for the reasons mentions. The other reason is that Google doesn't give it all to you, you only get a cut of what they collect.


Makes sense?

Hi,

I am planing to make a website that will be monetized by adsense ads. When I am doing keyword research I know that search volume and competition levels are a big factor in choosing keywords. If I choose a keyword that in google keyword planner (adwords) has a CPC of $7.00 will that effect my google adsense revenue for posting relevant ads to my keyword? I am aware that I will not receive the full amount per click as google will take a cut as well.

I hope this will help clear up as to what I meant.

Thanks

What affects your Adsense revenue is the quality of ads and the maximum bid willing to be paid by the advertiser.

If for some reason you get mostly poorer advertisers showing their ads on your site, your own revenues will be affected. Having been in the business for ten years, I can tell you that most advertisers have poor quality ads and use the display network in the wrong way. That's the nature of it I guess being a self-serve service.

Technically, the system will serve you the highest quality ads possible. That's how Google makes it's money and maximizes their revenues. You can help yourself by making sure each page is built in such a way that Google figures out what your page is about and deliver ads that match. But you are basically at the mercy of how good advertisers are.

Yes - Adwords CPC is correlated to Adsense RPC.

However it will not be the same because of:

- Revshare (~68% on content network, ~56% on search network)

- Click quality discounting (G will apply 'quality based pricing' to your traffic, which is usually another shave on top of revshare)

- Position / Landing page Quality (Your position in the ad block isn't what your visitors will be clicking on. Likewise if advertisers have high LPQ score and/or high CTR they will also get clicks cheaper than your bid)

- Spread (Difference between your bid and the cost per click)

So if G says bid $10 and you PAY $5 for a position 7 placement, on the content network (.68 of $5) with say a 10% QBP discount, as an adsense publisher who is likely getting clicks on position 2 ads on the content network, you'll probably end up with something close to $2 (no higher than $3.32 plus the position / LPQ discount of the guy in position 2).

Which leads us to RPM. RPC isn't the be all / end all on adsense. If an advertiser drivers higher CTR he can have lower CPC bid and still make you more money as a publisher as while your RPC will be lower your RPM will be higher.