UK vs US adword bid rates

[robwatts]

I have a UK account and a US account. The UK account makes me bid in pounds whereas the US account makes me bid in dollars.

If I am bidding in UK pounds and a competitor is bidding in US dollars how are the units treated for ranking purposes?

If I am bidding at say 99 pence (CTR factors aside) would a competitor bidding at 99 cents have equal ranking or would some form of calcus that recognised monetary exchange rates be undertaken?

For example the exchange rate today would equate 99 UK pennies to around 53 US cents.

How does adwords treat this?

Ive just set up a PPC campaign for a kw and noticed that the new UK campaign is performing considerably below par for the same KW when compared to a US based similar KW...Is this due to the freshness of the account or is some kind of unit for unit comparitor deciding that $1.50 is higher than £1.00?

Cheers

Rob

[AussieWebmaster]

I have a UK account and a US account. The UK account makes me bid in pounds whereas the US account makes me bid in dollars.

If I am bidding in UK pounds and a competitor is bidding in US dollars how are the units treated for ranking purposes?

If I am bidding at say 99 pence (CTR factors aside) would a competitor bidding at 99 cents have equal ranking or would some form of calcus that recognised monetary exchange rates be undertaken?

For example the exchange rate today would equate 99 UK pennies to around 53 US cents.

How does adwords treat this?

Ive just set up a PPC campaign for a kw and noticed that the new UK campaign is performing considerably below par for the same KW when compared to a US based similar KW...Is this due to the freshness of the account or is some kind of unit for unit comparitor deciding that $1.50 is higher than �1.00?

Cheers

Rob As far as I have seen and I have accounts in US, UK, Spanish, German, French, Japanese and Chinese each is based on common currency values but certain markets are just less expensive as there is not as much competition there yet.
Placement is still determined by the same factors... Max CPC (which is never anywhere near the actual CPC - generally) and the CTR of the creative. It does not work like Overture or most of the other systems but it does provide a mixture of competitive bidding and relevancy of ads.

What has to be remembered most in dealing with multiple languages is that each country using language differently and comes from different mindsets when searching.

[robwatts]

Thanks AW

Are you saying that they definitely do a realtime exchange rate calculus at the backend?

I could set it up and test I guess...(although I'd rather not)

[AussieWebmaster]

Thanks AW

Are you saying that they definitely do a realtime exchange rate calculus at the backend?

I could set it up and test I guess...(although I'd rather not)

I am having my rep confirm this but as far as I have found they spent a lot developing the ability to differentiate the pricing.

[robwatts]

I am having my rep confirm this but as far as I have found they spent a lot developing the ability to differentiate the pricing.
Sure, and one would imagine that some kind of monetary equality should be applied for all participants. It would be useful to hear an official position on the mechanics of such a reality, if it exists. I'd imagine that it could be quite a challenge to run a program that offers an advertorial in, to a single interface, yet allows those same participants to bid in all sorts of currency multiples, especially when the markets fluctuate so constantly.

Just curious. :)

[AussieWebmaster]

This is the reply I got from Google:

Google converts the bid value to the US Dollar and than determines the ad rank.

Before entering the auction, the CPC's are converted into what we call micro-currency. Basically, we calculate currency down to 6 decimal points. Highly exact exchange rates are retrieved daily.

The base currency is the US dollar, or more specifically, one hundred-thousandth of a US dollar, so even dollars are converted, really.

Because this is so granular a calculation, there is no advantage to bidding in one currency rather than another.

[robwatts]

Thanks AW :)