This is either a great big coincidence or Google being incredibly responsive.

In my last post I mentioned a conversation between myself and Mark Armstrong from Google at SMX Sydney where I said that the cost of updating and creating ads was excessive.

Today I got an email from the adwords api team that the cost of some api calls has been lowered

Thank you Google – this will make a big difference to the way we optimise ads

From the API Newsletter Below

Effective today, we have lowered the number of API units charged for the following services:Service Name, Former Rate (in API units), New Rate    

• addAds: 125 -> 50 per item
• addCriteria: 25 -> 20 per item
• updateCriteria: 10 -> 3 per item
• getKeywordVariations: 25 -> 20
• getKeywordsFromSite: 25 -> 20
• estimateAdGroupList: 25 -> 20 per item
• estimateCampaignList: 25 -> 20 per item
• estimateKeywordList: 25 -> 20 per item
• scheduleReportJob: 1000 -> 500

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SMX Sydney was a great success well done Barry.  I went to all the way to San Jose last year to hear what our international comrades think about search and Barry has saved me a trip this year by bringing the best of the best to us here in Australia.

Some of the A list thought leaders that I got to discuss the future of search with were Danny Sullivan, Rand Fiskin, and Gord Hotchkiss.  I couldn’t get within 10 feet of these guys in San  Jose.

It was also very good to see a lot of very familiar Australian faces in the crowd.  My old mate Mark Armstrong from Google and I had a very constructive conversation about AdWord API Fees – I said they were a touch expensive to add and update ads and he accused me of melting down several adwords servers and causing the San Fran power grid to shut down when the adwords api was free. We came to a mutual agreement that the adwords api fee was a good way to make people like me develop smarter software and hopefully he will push my feedback up to the people that set the api quota system and make it cheaper to publish ads.

Apology

I would like to make a public apology to Stuart Bartram from Double Click for calling him a big tool in the middle of my SEM tool kit presentation.  What I meant to say was that there were many big companies in the market that “BUILD” SEM tools - instead I said, “there are many big tools in the market” while pointing to Stuart. – Sorry about that matey, it was a genuine slip.

Thank You

Thanks to Adam Lasnik for being so incredibly generous with his time and sharing so much webmaster tool wisdom.  The legendary Rand Fiskin  - thanks for sharing SMO/M insights.  Of course Danny Sullivan for his views on the future of Bid Management.

Last but by no way least thank you to the very lovely Ani Babaian for sharing the incredible Live Webmaster Center with the Aussies and for draging us to the ice bar.

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To those of you that missed SMX Sydney here are my two presentations

1. First session was managing ads that convert (will open in PPT) – always a difficult topic but one of my favourites none the less.
2. Second was SEM toolkit (PPT) where I discussed the importance of campaign management and how Dynamic Creative  solves the pressing problems that search enginine marketers face in a Quality Score world of SEM.

love to get your comments

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