Dear AdWords Advertiser,
In early May, we'll be retiring Position Preference, an AdWords bidding feature that you may be using in one or more of your campaigns in account number XXXXXXXXXXX. This decision was made due to low adoption and the existence of alternatives for this feature (see below). To prepare for this change, we recommend that you disable Position preference in your campaigns to give you more control over your keyword bids. For instructions on how to disable Position preference, please see our Help Center at
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1204374.
More specifically, you can expect to see the following changes in your account:
* As of April 5th, Position Preference can no longer be enabled for campaigns in either the AdWords web interface or the API. Campaigns already using Position preference will still have it enabled. However, if you turn Position preference off in one of your campaigns, you will not be able to turn it back on.
* Starting in early May, we will begin disabling Position preference within all campaigns.
* When Position preference is disabled (either when you do so manually or when the feature is retired automatically in early May), the maximum CPC bids for those campaigns will be set to the bids that Position preference used most recently. Position preference tries to raise or lower your bids to target the positions you specify. So, using the most recent Position preference bid as your manual maximum CPC should minimize disruption to your traffic.
Before you disable Position Preference, we recommend that you export your manual bids by downloading a keyword report to back up any bids you set before you turned on Position preference. This report will include keyword level maximum CPC bids.
What are my alternatives to Position preference?
If youíd like to target specific ad positions, we recommend that you first read this blog post (
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/04/understanding-average-position-metric.html) from our chief economist, Hal Varian, on some of the pitfalls around targeting average position.
After reading the blog post, if youíd still like to target specific ad positions, we recommend using automated rules. With this feature, you can create an automated rule for your campaign that will change your bid if your average position differs from your target. For more information on how to use this feature, please see
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1204376.
If you have questions about the retirement of Position preference, please contact us. We appreciate your understanding and your continued support of AdWords.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team
