Google Adsense to Move from Second-Price to First-Price Auctions

[Ryuzaki]

Source: https://blog.google/products/adsense/our-move-to-a-first-price-auction/

If you're into PPC as an advertiser this will likely greatly effect your budget and the effectiveness of your spend if you don't increase it. Meaning Google is poised to make even more money off of you by making you blind to what the auctions really look like.

Second-Price bidding is much like proxy bidding, where you can go in and bid $10, and if the 2nd highest bidder bids $5.00, your bid will be incremented up to the winning spot (but no higher than $10). As a simple example, your bid will be increased to $5.01 (a penny higher than the winning second-price). This keeps the auctions honest and lower in price.

First-Price bidding goes like this: you bid $10 and the 2nd highest bidder bids $5.00. You win, but you pay $10 instead.

Google's rationale in pretending it's not selfish is that it will help you better plan your spend and have a predictable expenditure that meets your budget. Meaning they want all of your budget, not just as much as the 2nd best bidder is willing to spend.

This is only for Adsense for Content, Video, and Games, not Adsense for Search or Shopping.

Inform yourself, your clients, and your stakeholders that Google has gotten one over on you again! But hey, at least now you can plan your spending more simply!

If the share of the bids for publishers decreases in response to the increased income, much like Amazon did during all the lockdowns, I'm going to "laugh".

 

[bernard]

Will this mean higher earnings for publishers then?

 

[MrMedia]

Time to buy Google stocks before this becomes mainstream news.

 

[Potatoe]

Will this mean higher earnings for publishers then?

According to Google, yes and no, "There is no action for you to take as an AdSense publisher and you will likely not see a change to your earnings."

But also

"We believe this will help grow advertiser spending confidence in digital advertising and an increase in spending confidence over time will benefit publishers (that's you)."

Lol @ the absolute state of things when google knows that most of their adsense publishers are sundowning and need to be reminded that they're publishers.

If I parse this, it sounds like google is saying that the switch itself won't change anything immediately, but it will change advertiser habits and confidence longer term, which will increase your earnings (I'm making the leap that when they say "benefit publishers" they're referring to earnings).

 

[mrodriguez27]

As an AdSense publisher, I hope this benefits us. Although they don't seem to expect major changes for us, just by the logic of the system change, this should mean more revenue. Of course, if advertisers start paying more per click, they might limit their budget, reducing the effectiveness of this measure. Time will tell

 

[Pagey]

As an AdSense publisher, I hope this benefits us. Although they don't seem to expect major changes for us, just by the logic of the system change, this should mean more revenue. Of course, if advertisers start paying more per click, they might limit their budget, reducing the effectiveness of this measure. Time will tell

I too hope for an increase as well.
Look like last-minute changes were made by Google to prepare for the Christmas season.
They like to make changes like this before big-spending periods.

 

[harrytwatter]

Hey someone's gotta do something to justify that raise/promotion