As the title of this thread notes, I was setting up a new order in MSN Adcenter and some of my keywords are showing up with VERY high Base Bid (CPC) costs using the "Estimate the bids needed for each keyword to reach average position 1 " function.

Let me take a step back for a minute. When I first created the order, imported my keywords, and arrived on the Pricing step - the maximum base bid (CPC) that was shown to me was $21.20 for all keywords.

After I woke up from passing out on the floor, I wondered why this would be so high. It was definitely a shock to me. So, I expanded the bids out to display all key phrases and then clicked on the estimate bids link and sorted by the highest CPC.

The phrase in particular that was showing up highest was heart disease risk at $48.70. This has to be a joke? $48 a click? Other examples: artery disease at $21.20 and atherosclerotic heart disease at $19.86.

I work mostly within the health care and pharma industries, so I'm used to seeing prices higher on average. But, these seemed way too high to me. (Way higher than Google, which is always one of the most expensive engines.) Almost as if it could be a system bug/error...

So, my curiosity got the best of me. I then decided to try running a few non-health related key phrases: boston baseball at $19.07, atlanta baseball at $18.18, etc...

Wow! What's with the high costs?

Granted, the estimates were for "#1 position" - but, someone is in #1 now paying something close to that... right?

I'm almost wondering if there is a system bug... I can't imagine people are actually bidding that high?

Any thoughts?

Don't pay any attention to MSN's suggested bid when creating accounts. In my experience, bids across the board are lower than Google or Yahoo! Just take your max bids from there and submit those or drop 10-20% or something and you will be fine. Don't worry, you are not going to have to pay $48 per click to be in 1st position for 'heart disease risk' on MSN.

Well, that's good to know.

Why does their system show such stupidly high prices then? Are they trying to trick the naive into actually bidding that much - thus shooting up the overall costs everywhere? :confused:

I have acheived position 2 for $.50 when the suggested price for first was over $25. Those estimates are to shock you, so you think you are bidding conservatively at $5 (which is still outrageous). Although maybe not outrageous in the pharmaceutical industry. I think it desensitizes you into overbidding, until you realize you spent way more than you wanted to. Oops!

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This is a 3 year old thread - closing.