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.

[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!

[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.