If you run competitor campaigns in Google AdWords, where you have a list of trademarked competitor terms, then you should take note of a recent change in how Google is assigning CPC for those terms. After updating a client’s campaign with new ads and landing pages (yes, we erased the history, but because we felt the new ads and landing pages would more than make up for the short term higher CPC), we noticed that the CPC increased dramatically. Then after talking with our rep at AdWords we were informed of the recent change that Google is increasing the max CPC for competitor terms. He admitted that campaigns that are changed are flagged in Google’s system, triggering a review.

My advice: don’t change your competitor campaigns if you don’t have to. If you must, then rotate a new ad alongside the old ad until the new ad builds history.