Hi DavM,

You can use the Price estimation tool to see what the Avg. position would be for affected keywords. The higher the Avg. Position the more you may need to increase the bid price for that particular match type. Ad and keyword combination history may require higher or lower bids than those required of a new advertiser to obtain the same average position. For example, an advertiser might have to bid more than $0.05 even if the keyword research tool or price estimator found no data on the keyword.

If an ad/keyword combination does not meet several minimum thresholds, the ad will be displayed in a lower position, or not at all. Click-through Rate (CTR) is an important component of the checks to determine the thresholds. A low CTR indicates that users are not finding the ad useful. Please keep in mind that CTR is not the only measurement for relevancy, but there are a number of additional proprietary relevancy checks that are performed.

Please Note: price estimation tool is not specific to an account’s keyword history. The prices are a basic representation of what we would recommend for a bid to a new advertiser.

Microsoft adCenter will show one ad per advertiser per search engine results page (SERP). To help ensure the most relevant ad is shown, the display URL will be de-duped against other ads with the same display URL. Because only the most relevant ad will show, it is important that brand owners and affiliates work together to help ensure they use unique display URLs so that one of them is not de-duped.

The purpose of de-duping display URLs for ads shown in SERP is to provide the best experience for the searcher, which is key in maintaining a valuable audience for your ads.

Thank you,

Brian H - MSFT

Hi Brian

I understand all that, what I'm trying to work out is: All things being equal (ie CTR, quality, history,etc) which ad would show? I know that there is only one ad allowed per display url, so therefore the adcenter system would have to choose one of the three in my example above. Which one? Also, which one if the broad match bid was higher?

For example, Google will show the ad for the most specific keyword in the account, regardless of bid. ie if you bid $10 on "red widgets" on exact match and $100 on "red widgets" on broad match and the user types "red widget" then the exact match keyword and ad would always show. Google does this because "red widgets" on exact match is the closest match to what the user typed.

This is a great way for us to make sure that all the traffic for "red widgets" goes to one single ad. This also means that the traffic for keywords similar to "red widgets" but not the exact phrase "red widgets" goes to another ad, so we can effectively segment our traffic.

Can we segment our traffic like this on adCenter?

Cheers

David

Hello Dave,

You are correct, if you bid $10 on "red widgets" on exact match and $100 on "red widgets" on broad match and the user types "red widget" then the exact match keyword and ad would show.

You do have the right idea. 

I hope this helps.

Thank you,

Microsoft Advertising Support