Hi, I run affiliate campaigns in adwords. That means that I'm not the only one who runs ads for some display URLs. All affiliates share the same display URLs. Google only shows one ad with the same display URL at a time. Some of my keywords have an analytic small info window next to them which says that those keywords don't show any ads because the have the same display URL as a higher ranking ad. But I still get impressions and clicks on those keywords. How can that be? Does google rotate all ads with the same display uRLs? Does it show the higher ranking ad more often or simply all the time? How does the fact that my keywords have impressions and clicks stand beside the information google supplies? I apologize for the rambling. I would greatly appreciate any help. Thanks, Jonathan
As far as I'm aware, Google calculates ad rank for a specific keyword each and every time a searcher conducts a search using that keyword. You are getting clicks and impressions because once in a while your ad rank beats your competitor's ad rank for that specific keyword. This is possible because everyone's quality score fluctuates throughout the day according to performance. The best (and most obvious) way to knock out your competitor is to try and increase your quality score to the point where your competitor's quality score cannot compete against yours. A better idea would be to avoid all that hassle altogether by constructing your own landing page and sending prospects to it instead of to the merchant. With a landing page, you will have far more control over your sales (provided you do everything correctly, of course). You will be able to pre-sell the product -that is, warm the prospects up to the idea of buying the product before redirecting them. You can also add brand variations to provide choice, add bonuses to further entice your prospects to buy through you, and include an opt-in "newsletter", which you can use to repeatedly contact your prospects with similar promotions.