Google Supports CPC for Site Targeted Campaigns

Google is now running a beta for CPC bidding in site targeted campaigns.

Google Site Targeted CPC Announcement

Site targeted campaigns allow you to advertise in Google's content network (websites running Adsense) on a site by site basis. The idea of site targeted campaigns is that you can more easily manage your bids. If a particular site is performing very well you can increase your bid without increasing your bid on all the other trash sites included in Google's content network. You can also walk down bids on under performing sites without removing the site all together from your campaigns.

Up until now the only bidding option for site targeted campaigns was CPM (cost per 1000 impressions). The biggest problem with this is that you're paying for people to see your ad rather than clicking on your ad. CPC (cost per click) bidding allows you to only pay for people who click on your ad. This gives you a much better chance to track your advertising spend in relation to actual visitors to your site.

In my industry a lot of the sites with Adsense ads on them have unusually high "impressions to unique user" ratios. This means that only a hand full of users create a large number of impressions. For me, paying for impressions is an incredibly inefficient way of bidding as impressions do not accurately represent the potential for sales. Furthermore, as time goes on many web users will start to develop banner blindness to Google's Adsense ads. This means that impressions will start to represent fewer and fewer clicks.

CPC bidding allows me to manage my bids in relation to actual traffic. In the case of sites with high impressions to unique user ratios, CPC bidding allows me to keep from paying for my ad to be shown to the same person over and over again.

I welcome this development over and Google and I have already signed up to become part of this beta. If I get in I'll post my experiences here along with another beta I'm part of (site performance reports).