I spend a ton of money on PPC for various things and spend an awful lot of time analysing data, and the last few weeks have been a perfect example of how not keeping calm in a market can lead to havoc.
In the run up to Christmas, demand for this particular niche actually drops off and does so quite significantly. Most of the year things are pretty constant at $N per click, but as demand naturally dropped off in the last few weeks, I saw our placement drop from top three to second page, with bid requirements for returning to our former glory shot through the roof to 2 x $N and above.
I consulted with a colleague in the same industry also dialled into PPC and he said the same thing was going on – advertisers were throwing more money at their PPC in an attempt to buy business that wasn’t really there, forcing prices up, moving encumbants down the ranks and starting a vicious circle.
I’ve chosen to ride it out. We can live without the demand this month, but can’t live with buying business at a loss (this isn’t the 90′s after all!).
It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the market returns in January and demand literally spikes. At that point there’ll be loads of advertisers with over the top bids, a slew of clickers shopping around and a lot of runaway budgets.
I know the upturn in bids isn’t a result of automation in most cases too as I know many of the advertisers and how they operate. It’s a human thing that’s ironically caused by too much, but not enough, data. If you were to just set and forget your ads, you’d tick along and neither be the best nor worst, you start to do some analysis and think every answer is in the spreadsheet but you miss the crucial piece – common sense.
So – countdown time.. let’s see what the market brings in 7 days time…
