Ugh, one of the graphs is for YoY decline in CPC rates, but it it shows 2015 at the <i>right</i> and 2019 at the far <i>left</i>. Who does that?<p>And it shows it by quarter, so is this a rolling window?<p>Then:<p>> As long as Google can keep growing the blue line -- growth of paid clicks faster than the red line its ad click deflation -- then it is golden.<p>> Every three months Google has to find faster ways of expanding the total number of paid clicks by as much as 66%.<p>NO! The blue line, from the 68% value, was their growth in click quantity. And the direct comparison between CPC and clicks isn’t valid: GOOG could have the less clicks but increase its CPC revenue if it targets poorly. Total revenue is what we should look at.<p>Other than all this, this seems to be much ado about nothing. If GOOG can better target ads, they’ll get more clicks. And when an ad pays well, publishers create content that will show that ad, driving down rates but increasing clicks.<p>And GOOG’s ad growth is international. Where GDP is lower; as CPC rates will go lower. And international increasingly favours CPM in my opinion. A fast food chain or a brand of soap doesn’t need clickthroughs.
After 10 years of spending 100k on average per month, we stopped spending in 2019 and put money into cold calling. Conversions tripled and we could only spend half our yearly budget in our call campaign. Google is expensive and returns now suck even more than they did in 2017.
I am not rejecting the author's analysis, but the industry is moving towards cost per conversion. Even marketers for small time ad agencies have gotten savvy and realized that the click is nothing but a proxy.
Also, I never realized Google actually posted CPC numbers, I don't track B2C in depth, but considering the amount of synthetic traffic, CPC numbers can be meaningless.
I wish that shareholders would frequently vote on what data is included in the financial reports. Either that or have the SEC be much much more pressing on the issue.<p>Perhaps even a minority of shareholders (say 30%) should be allowed to enforce data publication rules.<p>Why should the management decide on which data is disclosed and which is not? It should rather be entirely decided by the management's supervisors, this is the shareholders or the regulators. Makes no sense to me otherwise.<p>"Yes, it's all your money that we manage here, but you can't look at it. You can only look at what we allow you to look at. Now go model our company and figure out what our stock should be worth without whatever it is that we don't give you."
Not related to the article, but this video autoplay is super annoying. An alternative version for those who also find this annoying: <a href="https://outline.com/5Vd9BS" rel="nofollow">https://outline.com/5Vd9BS</a>
These graphs suck, but it looks like last quarter was a much lower decrease than the past. That doesn’t fit the articles argument that CPC is falling off a cliff and google is trying to hide it.
Explains a bit the recent redesign of ads in SERP. Google seems to struggle to keep growing Adwords - it still make an astounding amount of money still.
If these graphs were segmented by device, network (search vs. display/youtube) and the country it would tell the story. Users are doing more searches and clicking more as a result of the convenience of mobile devices. Desktop users were and are more intent-driven (worth more to advertisers), but now comprise a much smaller percentage of the total. Display and Youtube impression inventory may be becoming a larger percentage of total, but has lower value than search thereby bringing down the average. As stated by another user international expansion into lower income regions would lead to lower average CPC as well.