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I was in Ads. Offhand I don't know how they'd raise the prices, since it IS an auction. But there is literally no one who understands it all, so I'm sure there
by AlbertCory 3y ago
I was in Ads. Offhand I don't know how they'd raise the prices, since it IS an auction.
But there is literally no one who understands it all, so I'm sure there are ways.
- tpmx 3y agoDo they actually publicly claim it is a (fair) auction?
- AlbertCory 3y agohttps://policies.google.com/terms https://policies.google.com/terms have fun
- conradfr 3y agoI don't even understand the AdWords UI these days.
- prepend 3y agoThey could raise prices by upping the minimum bid. For example for the keyword “foo” google sets the minimum bid at $1. I set my max bid at $5. There’s only 5 bidders so we all pay $1. Google ups the minimum to $2 and it’s under our max bid so now we all pay double. That’s how.
- AlbertCory 3y agoThat would be blatant. There are subtler ways.
- mathteddybear 3y agoIt's very simple. If it is not a refactoring, a UI/UX redesign, or a wholly new ad product, then most likely it affects average prices of running ad campaings. Even if you think it does not, maybe you slipped in a coding bug. So before rolling out your change, you canary it and measure how much it changed stuff. A dumb raise in ad price will cause bad stuff for conversion costs, so it'll be a no-go.
- AlbertCory 3y agoBelieve me, it is not simple. The AdWords system is not only more complicated than you imagine, it's more complicated than you can imagine.
- mathteddybear 3y agoDid you read the linked article? The context of this discussion is VP of Ads (Jerry Dischler) explaining on the stand what this Ad process of making changes look like, in his exec-level lingo, and news reporting on it adding another layer of obscurity. I explain what it means for the HN audience Yeah, Ads Googlers perform a massive numbers of these price-affecting canarying and rollouts yearly, and it's not about raising minimal bid prices that folks ITT think of. Even if Google didn't support automated bidding strategies, there would be other considerations, for instance hourly budgeting. Not diving into details.
- AlbertCory 3y agoYes, Mat, I read the linked article. And I think I know a lot more about this than you do. You use the word "canarying" and "rollouts" as if they meant anything. There are a lot of VPs at Google.
- mathteddybear 3y agoThey mean pushing new software versions to production. Now, does the number of VPs at Google have anything to do with the topic we discuss?