Google adwords - now harder to get on page 1?

[Bikerjon]

Anyone else noticed a substantial drop in Adwords activity over the last few months? It's been a while since I looked at my Adwords account but I have noticed a decline in both impressions (and clicks) for quite a few weeks now. Finally get round to looking into this today and I see that the small (cheaper) adverts on the right hand side have now been scrapped. I understand this was part of a big change that was made a few months ago, but the end result seems that there are now less Ad positions available on page 1 which makes the bidding more expensive. No-one wants to be on page 2 do they?!

I'm not a big Adwords spender by any stretch, but this change is slightly annoying as I always got a healthy trickle of enquiries from the "cheaper" ad placements.

[Dejay1788]

Bikerjon said:

Anyone else noticed a substantial drop in Adwords activity over the last few months? It's been a while since I looked at my Adwords account but I have noticed a decline in both impressions (and clicks) for quite a few weeks now. Finally get round to looking into this today and I see that the small (cheaper) adverts on the right hand side have now been scrapped. I understand this was part of a big change that was made a few months ago, but the end result seems that there are now less Ad positions available on page 1 which makes the bidding more expensive. No-one wants to be on page 2 do they?!

I'm not a big Adwords spender by any stretch, but this change is slightly annoying as I always got a healthy trickle of enquiries from the "cheaper" ad placements.

Yes it appears that it's getting harder / more expensive these days. I'd imagine they've got rid of the side ads because of the huge popularity of mobile browsing where the side ad's didn't show anyway.

[Bikerjon]

Dejay1788 said:

Yes it appears that it's getting harder / more expensive these days. I'd imagine they've got rid of the side ads because of the huge popularity of mobile browsing where the side ad's didn't show anyway.

Yes I agree, although it makes me wonder if mobile browsing has really reached the point where it's deemed more important than other devices!

[Dick Dastardly]

Last year was the "Year of Mobile", where it became the default device and more people searched on google with a smartphone than anything else. Google now classes itself as mobile first, so desktop ads copied the way mobile ones work. It has made traffic more expensive in most markets as to be highly visible now you need to be a top 4 advertiser.

[Bikerjon]

Dick Dastardly said:

It has made traffic more expensive in most markets as to be highly visible now you need to be a top 4 advertiser.

Thanks for confirming. For my local search area I'm competing against national companies for the top 4 positions - I'm effectively out of the race for most relevant keywords.