Ask.com PPC Outperforming MSN

Anybody else see similar results?

[skibum]

ROI tends to be about the same between the two but Ask.com seems to be gaining traffic and good traffic while MSN tends to be flat and in some cases 4th behind GOOG, YHOO! & MSFT.

Maybe the Ask.com ad campaigns are getting some traction. Hard to believe that with all that money and tech people, MSN seems to be slipping behind Ask.com.

Not in every market or every client but in some cases, it sure seems like Ask is gaining.

[beren]

Seriously? I had bad experiences with Ask's PPC program and do not use them. I tried them when they started and got tons of bad clicks from affiliates. Their own ads did not (and still do not, as far as I know) appear on ask.com (which shows AdWords ads), but were farmed out. And the budget disappeared in no time because of the obviously fraudulent clicks.

Last December they were at the SES trade show, and promised that they had cleaned up their act and were providing higher quality traffic. So I tried them again. Mistake. Same story. Fraudulent clicks from the same bad affiliate.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I am never dealing with Ask again.

And the fact that they provide more clicks than MSN is a negative.

The good thing about MSN AdCenter, and the reason is provides high ROI, is that the traffic is low. They don't have sleazy affiliates. Or any affiliates. All the traffic is from msn.com and live.com, so it is limited in size, but it is quality traffic. I just worry that MSN will soon take on affiliates, partly in response to advertisers complaining about low traffic levels. As far as I'm concerned, low traffic levels are a good thing.

[Voxman]

I'm not impressed that when you start to add campaigns they grab 3 times the overall daily amount. Therefore the more campaigns you have the higher the dollar amount tied up in their bank account and not mine. It's like Yahoo except if you keep your account funded in Yahoo it can be as low as you like until it runs out then you have to put in 3 times the daily average. Google and MSN have the best. Bill you later.

As for MSN not having traffic and poor affiliates...they will have content providers soon enough.

[Swanson]

MSN will never do what Ask has done and syndicate to crap partners - Ask is a tiny company compared to MS and will do anything to get the cash in, whilst MSN is cutting affiliate advertising on its PPC and keeping it clean from third party syndication because it can genuinely build something good unlike Ask.

Ask does arbitrage to a level that only Geosign did - but Ask is untouched because it is a Google XML partner and a big "brand"

[Swanson]

Are you aware that most of your traffic from Ask orginated from some dodgy PPC engine, or dodgy toolbar?