mallinger - 9:24 am on Jun 6, 2006 (gmt 0)

Recently I started advertising my new mortgage lead affiliate site with overture. I did this for a week or so. This was only for testing and learning ppc and I had very little traffic 2-3 visits a/day. The traffic was very targeted and I had already 2 leads $30 each and spent only $10 or so. I was happy with this first experience because I was able to make my first sales and had a good ROI.

I was paying .99 per click, I had tried to bid higher for a few hours but noticed an increase questionable traffic from third parties. My maximum bid for my category was .99 My maximum daily budget was around $5 or so. Yesterday I wondered if i was not getting all traffic because my budget was so small. I decided to test a $20 budget/day for one day to see if I would get more traffic. I had already earned $60 and if something went wrong I would still have a ROI. My Max CPC was still .99

Yesterday late at night i checked my stats and saw a sudden increase in visits from third party engines. 5 visits, 10 visits, 15 visits... It didn't seem to stop. All traffic were from the small ppc doorwaypage domains like quicksearch, 411search... you know what i mean. I noticed that my ad was always displayed on top and it was always the same listing. I have 4000 listings but only this one was suddenly sending me traffic.

The strangest thing was that is was always the same listing. I have a screenshot were you can even see my listing on yahoo.com were it is displayed on top of all sites for a search term that i never entered.

Let me explain:

I NEVER bid on popular keywords like home equity loans directly. (I assume most of you don't) Instead i would bid on "home equity loans oregon" or "xy home equity loans" etc. But then I saw my ad(this is always the same listing) on yahoo.com in the top 3 for the keyword "loan consolidation" and "home equity loans" I have the screenshots to prove that.

I have a large keyword list and "loan consolidation" is not one of my keywords. Is this called advanced match or what? Btw: I always have content match turned off.

I made a few screenshots of my ads and then I decided to go to bed and check this the next day. If yahoo would bill me for that I would lose $20 max.

I THOUGHT THAT WOULD LOSE ONLY $20 MAX.

I morning i checked my web stats and saw 200 visits for the last day.
I had 5 visits/day before.

My overture account showed 100 visits - Average CPC 4.25$(!) Amount spent $450

Then I checked my inbox. I had 20 messages or so from yahoo search:

"Your account is offline. Please add money to your account to start receiving traffic again."

1 minute later: we have charged you $30(This was the amount that i specified) This repeats itself again and again minute after minute.... And no I hadn't turned my budget off.

I mean is this legal? I have set $20/day budget and they send me (low quality clicks) worth $450 in one night?

I thought the account will be taken offline I reach my daily budget?

My max CPC is .99 and they charge me 4.25 CPC?
i have e-mailed the support... Still waiting for a reply.