I ran campaign over the weekend for test purposes. WTF..is this crap? Position preference is BS. Lets say i want to be in positions 3 or 4. If i bid a certain amount...and my bid is not JUST RIGHT....i will not show in position 3 or 4....i will not show ANYWHERE!!! Waste of time...looks like. Anyone else have any experiences with PP?
The system does work but it is not perfect. If you set your preference to positions 1-3 it works just fine. Now don't get me wrong it won't put your ad in those positions just because you ask it to, you have to be eligible to have it displayed there. By that I mean that your combination of quality score and bid price would be sufficient to achieve those positions, if you're not your ad just won't show - which is what you asked it to do. It gets more complicated if you select positions 3-4. The same rules apply in that you have to be bidding enough to have your ad displayed in these positions. If you are bidding enough to get position 1 then technically you should be displayed in position 3 because of the preference setting and therefore be charged less. It can get problematical though because if everyone who is eligible for positions 1-2 has their preferences set to 3 or lower then what happens about positions 1 and 2? in this case Google will override your position preferences and you may appear in a higher position than you desire. My experience is that it works just fine if you want to only be displayed in the top positions but it is pretty useless if you want to use it as a lazy man's way of controlling your cost per click.