The Ad Diagnostic Tool shows this for like 18 out of 20 keywords in my Ad Group, and my impressions and clicks have pretty much halted: This keyword isn't showing ads Your ad shares a similar Display URL with a competing, higher ranking ad. My ad was performing great, with a 20% CTR for some keywords and a 5% over all. A couple days after I launched the campaign, I noticed new ads appearing from other fellow marketers using the same exact display URL. The display URL is that of a major company, so it's fair game for others to use. Would registering my own domain and using that as my display URL help fix this problem? Or do I need to enter into a bidding war with these other people?
Your Display URL isn't the site that you are linking to? Isn't that against Google's Terms & Conditions?
I believe he's doing some affiliate advertising (ex. selling products at Amazon). It's OK if it matchs your destination URL.
Higher ranking ad means that they've either got a higher quality score, higher CTR, or higher bid. If a new ad comes on, it has no CTR history & quality score should be the same (if they go to the same site), therefore, it's the other affiliate bidding more that knocks you off.
Your bids don't affect your Quality Score, they are combined with your Quality Score to determine your position. You can't buy a good QS...
Right... as I said, since the quality score of both landing pages is the same (assuming you're both landing visitors on the same page), the deciding factor is the bid.
In this case, your keywords have history and an established CTR. Both of these are used by Google in calculating quality score. If the previous advertiser matches the bid of the new advertiser and they are using the same landing page, then the previous advertiser will get the higher ad rank. Especially with the 20% CTR you mentioned.