Click to enlarge letter

Google announced that it will start charging higher minimum bids for keywords for those advertisers whose placements prove less relevant to readers. A "Quality Score" will be associated with each ad, determined chiefly by performance, and the resulting minimum bid for a keyword may change over time. This means that different advertisers will have to pay a different amount at the low end of the keyword bid scale. This will allow Google to reap more ad revenue from advertisers it previously shunted aside in an effort to increase the general relevance of its ad panels.

The immediate practical result for existing Google advertisers is that keywords that were previously put "on hold" by Google may suddenly awaken, so long as their maximum bids exceed the new minimum bid set by Google based on the ads' Quality Scores.

Google also announced that it simplified its user interface for advertisers mucking about with their Google AdWords campaigns. Keywords will no longer fall into the "in trial," "on hold" and "disabled" categories. They will appear as either active or inactive.