Adwords UK vs US

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Fuzzo

Fuzzo

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Oct 9, 2007
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Belfast, Ireland.
www.soccerdata.net
Hey guys,

I wanted a pose a few issues to you in order to determine if there is any difference in pricing and system values from location to location. I have been experiencing severe issues with pricing in adwords - now this is mostly due to my apparent lack of ability in the PPC field (i.e quality score penalties etc). However even when my quality score is 'Great' on an uncompetitive word I can only ever reach £0.03.

Maybe this could be the result of a higher standard of living (or price of living if you will here - mainly due to the drop in value of the dollar etc.). My question is am I paying more for the same service because of a stronger economy?

Case in question: I have seen people getting $0.03 clicks with AdWords - at the current conversion rate that works out at around £0.015, in comparison the lowest I have found for UK clicks is £0.03 working out at around $0.06

My conclusion: Is £0.03 a worldwide base irrelevant of currency?

This may sound like a random whine, but I was interested to gear opinions on the issue - and whether signing up under a US alias would benefit my earnings (if even at a risk)

So, any thoughts?
 


I've had my minimum bids down to £0.02 so I'm not sure that X0.03 is the 'worldwide base', but that's still above what you're quoting for the US equivalent. Its an interesting question, though.

Does the price go down if we're bidding for US traffic (my campaigns are exclusively UK-based)? How do they deal with the exchange rates in determining minimum bids (if a US user has a $0.07 minimum bid, do I have to bid £0.03 or £0.04 to compete?)?
 
Ok, so thats that conclusion quashed! But yes, I understand what your saying - the main point of the thread was to ask if the USA had an advantage over other countries regardless of geo-targeting or anything else.

Myself, I have no clue - but I have a suspicion that I have a distinct disadvantage.
 
A great QS might be $.03 in the US, .03€ and £0.03. So yes, you are effectively paying 50-100% more (if you have low competition keywords and are able to pay those min prices). It really starts hurting with bad QS though, $.4 vs. £.4 (I would assume?). Anyways, thats the reason I chose to have my accounts in USD instead.
 
Okay, thanks for that confirmation. How did you manage to get that? Did you have to use an American address / credit card etc?

Thanks for the input by the way!

I currently use a debit card associated with my address to manage my adwords account.
 
It doesn't matter if you have a US or EU CC. However the backup CC has to be from the same country, but it's not like the really check for it. My main CC is currently a US one (and was a German one before that) with a German as the backup card. The only difference is that accounts with a US CC address will be managed from the US, whereas USD accounts with a EU CC address from Ireland. And you can only choose your currency on signup.
 
Yeah, either you need a credit history, SSN and an address in the US you can use, or just a SSN + address and get a bank account with a debit card. Or simply get the Amex IDC (just found about this last night, this is what im going to do).
 
I wish I had opened my Adwords account as an American one, I've noticed this £0.03-$0.03 thing for a while now. The lowest I've paid for a content network bid is £0.01, but for the main search listing it has been £0.03.
 
Yeah, the best thing are the MR points though. $1 = 1 MR Point. And you can transfer those to pretty much any program for 1:1 (not to Starwood though, thats 2:1). You can get Virgin Upper Class RTs for 90-100k, which is pretty decent. And through CX & bmi you pretty much can fly on almost any oneWorld and *A carrier, as well as skyteam ones.

Beats no miles and having to pay 1% foreign currency charges ;)
 
I don't know if there is a fixed minimum base, but I can tell you that $0.03 is NOT the lowest.

In one PPC campaign I had, with a VERY hight CTR, the EFFECTIVE price was more like $0.007 - $0.01.

My AdWords account is neither american, canadian nor english, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it.
 
Fuzzo said:
So gopher - which card are you looking into getting?

I was looking at the basic Green Card to start off with - any ideas?

Cheers
Click to expand...
I'm gonna get the Platinum. I'll be funding half of my town with my taxes anyway, so no need to save a few hundred dollars.
Plus the benefits (insurance, lounge pass, concierge) are actually quite useful for me, as I travel a lot.
 
What you all talking about? If you want to pay US cents instead of EUR cents close your damn account, open another and choose USD at signup. It doesn`t matter where you live or which CC you have.

cheers
 
Which is actually what I said in my post. However we are not talking about this any more, but USD based CCs instead as to not pay foreign currency charges (anywhere from 1 - 2.75%) and to finally get some rewards based on the spending.
 
Platinum sounds good, I just cant really shelve out the annual cost of the card right now. I guess I can always switch reward schemes if I'am on Green.

Especially as at the moment am not doing a lot of travelling!

Cheers guys.
 
Fuzzo said:
Platinum sounds good, I just cant really shelve out the annual cost of the card right now. I guess I can always switch reward schemes if I'am on Green.

Especially as at the moment am not doing a lot of travelling!

Cheers guys.
Click to expand...

Oh, from what I understand the rewards are the same, and you should be able to upgrade down the line, if you want to.

But I'm sure someone that actually has an Amex will be able to answer that question better.
 
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