I really don't know what else to do. I've reviewed every help topic, used keywords in the ad, the ad, link and landing pages are relavent to each ad, and the CPC bid does nothing to help me out. The site itself has solid results in search engines. Top 1-3 pages with keywords we were focusing on, and top 4-10 in others. The CTR is anywhere from 0.01 - 0.03. For example, one ad has 230,000 impressions and 33 clicks. It claims the avg. position is 2.5, but the ad consistently shows up on the absolute last ad on >> more sponsored links. The first two days, the ad ran in the top 3, and fell off the face of the earth. The market isn't really saturated with heavy hitters, as there are only a handful of places that offer the programs we offer at the same level we can offer it.
Your clickthrough rate is VERY low and if it is NOT atleast .05% than the ad will either get charged at 10.00 a click or it may fall off the page as has happened to you. Without knowing how your campaigns are designed, the other thing is are your ad groups very tightly niched? The only way of throwing 500 keywords into a campaign is just useless... Sam
Where does your PPC ad show up when you use Google's Ad Preview tool? If your ad ranking dropped without a change in your keyword bid, then 1) competition increased and/or 2) your quality score fell. With such a poor CTR that's not helping your quality score either. With so many impressions and such a poor CTR, it sounds like you are advertising with Google's content network. You may want to consider excluding it or copying all of your ads into a separate campaign for display on the content network.
according to the tool posted above, we were the last ppc ad (which was on page 4). ..and yes, we were advertising on the content network with a TON of impressions. I paused the current campaign and started a fresh one with new ads that target only a few keyphrases each. Do you recommend using broad, [] or " " for your keywords/phrases?
Your impressions will decrease, but your CTR will increase if you use phrase or exact match. When you use those match options, you can write much better ad copy because it can be more specific to the search keywords. This will also help your CTR and quality score. I'm sure you've seen this before, but just in case... here's what I mean about writing better PPC ad copy.
Improve your Ad Quality Score by including your targeted keyword in the ad. It will improve your ad ranking as well lowers the bid. When your ad positions become good obviously your ads will get more clicks....improvement in CTR....then conversions follows... Try to divide large set of keywords into niche groups and crate new ads with relevant to your keywords and product/service.
You need to improve your CTR. Google often decreases the rankings of low CTR pages. It'll also decrease your cost and increase your quality score.
You almost sound like you're being sarcastic, but I'll just assume you want an answer. Here's more info on quality score, its effects and how to improve it.
What's your clickthrough rate on the search network alone (excluding the content network ctr, which is irrelevant)? Also, what's your minimum bid quality score?