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in other words if you bid for widget, you will not automatically get results for blue widget.
As Mundonet said, their example is so poor it is hard to know with any degree of certainty what they will or won't do. Basically, all they say is that they will look at bid terms and search terms and match them the way Overture believes they should be matched. Why can't they match them the way the people paying the bills intended them to be matched? That sounds like a simple enough concept.
in other words if you bid for widget, you will not automatically get results for blue widget.
But if you bid for blue widget, will you automatically get results for widget? It seems from their own example that they will remove qualifiers from bids - so if you are trying to bid on a low-volume, very specific term, Overture may match you with a much broader, much less useful search term.
It is hard to say they will do that because their own example is so pathetic.
<added> I intended to say their own lack of examples is pathetic. The one example they do provide is both clear and frightening.
Why can't they match them the way the people paying the bills intended them to be matched? That sounds like a simple enough concept -Mardi_Gras
I agree 100%, that's what attracted us to Goto in the first place.
My recommendation - spread your PPC funds around, track your ROI religiously. If OverSure ROI drops for your wordsets, See Ya!
I've already started carving up my clients' PPC budgets, and have some fabulous surprises for some of them.
OV is really taking away some of the deep keyword researchers competitive advantage. And losing some of their own advantage in the process.
Example: If all terms relating to the purchase of "blue widgets" are automatically MD'ed to "blue widget" at a high cost - which surely is the goal - there will be less advertisers bidding on the high end for this term, (at least assuming that SOME of them watch their ROI)
...Less bidders = less competition = less reason to overbid.
Keep in mind the excess VC cash of 2-3 years ago is all but gone, and there will be no "banner-sale-heyday" on text listings.
Good luck to OverSure, but I am positive they will be getting less of my clients' cash, as soon as I see the results of this plan.
I am actually grateful they are rolling this out before the height of Holiday shopping, so adjustments can be made. Their backlash will be felt in the ire of top spending advertisers that do not watch their ROI closely and burn through lots of bucks with a deadly combination of AutoBidding, MatchDriver, and AutoBilling.
January's credit card bills will cause some major headaches, and an exodus of advertisers.
This isn't going to include as many generic terms as it seems, but more work with the words you're bidding on. For instance, someone bidding on "small blue widget" would automatically also get bids for "ble small widget" Or someone bidding on "London hotel" would also get "hotel in London"
I COULD be wrong, but that's the impression I get from what we've been told today
For instance, someone bidding on "small blue widget" would automatically also get bids for "ble small widget"
That's not how Overture's own example works. Using the OV example, someone bidding on "small blue widget" would also automatically get searches for "small widget."
If I wanted to bid on "small widget," I would.
The impression I got is that if you bid for "widget" and you have "blue" in the description or title of that or another search term, and "blue widget" seems like something you'd be interested in by OVER, then you will be displayed for "blue widget" and your max bid from "widget" will be applied to it.
Somehow, OVER's new algo will search your PPC search term listings and decide what you are also relevant for. It will then find the "primary search term" from the other primary search terms it is based on that costs the most, and apply your new generated search term and max bid to it accordingly.
I hope that makes sense :)
and "blue widget" seems like something you'd be interested in by OVER
That is certainly how it works. The question we are all asking, is how does Overture decide what we would like to be bidding on?
Maybe WE are the best ones to decide what we want to bid on - but you can't opt out of Match Driver.
This concerns me as I am looking for key words that we bid on and we are not on the right hand column matches anywhere...?
Anyone else test this?
No doubt that the move is to raise their revenue. I see 3 ways:
- print ads on terms where they were no bids
-pooling bidders from different search terms variations therefore raising the bar to be in the top 3
- using the highest Maxbid of an advertiser from his pool of search term variations and applying it to all variations (therefore raising my Maxbid on terms that I do not want to)
The question is the extent of the "mapping' and the number of KW required to trigger the "matching". Like someone said above, watch out your titles & descriptions.
We are in tourism and working on exotic destinations like volcano & rain forest. A lot of kids are doing school research and if an expensive mufti KW targeted bid is "mapped" to a general term with 1 or 2 KW it can get pretty expensive when a teacher launches 120 kids on our subject.
So bidding on "London Hotel", will get you adverts on "London Hotels", "Londen Hotel", "A London Hotel" or "Hotels in London".
It does not indicate that words will be removed from your listings. Never forget, if their system produces non-relevant results, partners will terminate their contracts and Overture will be gone very quickly.
It does not indicate that words will be removed from your listings.
gsx - I can't imagine that the UK MatchDriver would work significantly differently than the American version, and the American version clearly will remove limiting keywords. That's not my guess; that's the Overture example I quoted above.
How significant an impact that will have remains to be seen, as Overture has been very vague about how it will decide what we really meant to bid on.
Of the 300 listings I had for both the US and the UK, I have lost about 30% on each one.
Out of interest, I did a couple of tests to see how match driver currently works:
"how to design a web site" produces the listings for "web site design" - not in my opinion beneficial to advertiser or searcher
"widget sale" produces the listings for "widget for sale" - advertiser can no longer bid on less popular term "widget sale" (previously say no 1 at 5 cents) and now has to bid on more popular term "widget for sale" (currently say no 1 at 50 cents) to show up for either
None of this seems beneficial for the small advertiser, although I did notice one good thing - for a lot of the search terms Overture previously declined, I now show up - if I remember rightly the reason for disallowing them before ran along the lines of wanting to maintain the quality of results in order to provide a better user experience.
The last thing I wanted was to pay the high price
American spelling, to target a Canadian Audience.
eg (match terms using Colour vs Color).
This match driver is bad for Overture.
First the user will get more irrelevent results,
CTR will drop for the advertisers. And users will
abandon Overture for Google, since they are geting
so many irrelevent results.
It appears that Overture's Board of directors, needs more Devil Advocate's. They can't see the long term consequences, on their short term grap for cash.
My bets is that Match Driver will be a opt in program in six months time.
<-----
It look like Overture has good results for blue widgets and red widgets
I've always thought so. :)
I agree that some advertisers are going to get a huge shock and bill from OV. Someone has to get my 400 clicks a day at 3x the price I've been paying. At least everyone is going to have to track their roi very close now. I just feel bad for those competitors who don't have the tech or ability to track sales from ov listings...
I'm just happy I found WW, because we are doing great in the SE's from all I've learned here. Sales are way up, and we don't need OV anymore...
1) If I wanted additional search terms or combinations, I would have bid on them. I do not, but you leave me no choice.
2) Tracking will be extrememely difficult with the new system. There is plenty of room for error when counting clicks already. Now there is even more room for error.
3) Your auto bidding tool has done nothing to help me. The bids for competitive keywords had reached a level of stability before you started this program. Now they are higher than ever before.
"Still have grandfathered bids!" don't rejoice too soon, I don't think that Match Driver is at full speed yet. They can tighten the screw at will by tweaking the algo. And there is NO TOOLS to see how the thing works except doing searches one by one.
The dumb thing is full of nonsense, we are bidding on "lodge at widget volcano" (there is only one with that name on the entire planet) and now our results appear worldwide for 'lodge volcano'. We are now competing with people with a destination located 15,000 mile away for TOTALLY useless clicks.
We have also 9 double listings produced by the Driver. Overture's Drunk Driver is spamming for us.
On the down side, a competitor has also 2 listings on one of our top search terms. From past experience [webmasterworld.com], it will take us several complaints and more than 1 month to get one of them removed.
The result meanwhile is: #1 bid: $.40, #2: $.28, #3 duplicate: $.27, #4 us: $26 (Autobid), #5: $.10. Result is that without the duplicate our cost (read: Overture's revenue) would be $ .11 to be in the top 3. Now, we have to bid $ .28 to be in the top 3. That's a rip-off of 254%.
How many thousand cases like these out there? (multiply by several thousand clicks a day)
In a cursory review of a few of my clients accounts, we see an increase per click of over 45% in some instances. With this much exposure to phrases that are NOT worth the cost of the primary word, I will be advising several clients to drop OV immediately before the damage sets in. This may well backfire, as it may force advertisers to examine the ROI of each term rather than the lazy aggregated way that most use.
As suspected, every bullsh*t "enhancement" OV has come up with drops ROI for our clients. Whose ROI are they touting anyway? Their own?
A searcher seeking "search term" knows that they want "search term" and I, the advertiser will pay X for it.
Searchers seeking "fluffy stuffy silly search related terms of yore" certainly is far less valuable - yet now, they will have the opportunity to be misdirected, and my clients will pay for it.
And to think, I was just about to send all of my clients the "triple up your OV account budgets for the holidays" letter. Nix that one. Now its, "spread it around the more viable options ASAP, and here are the options..."
An OV visitor used to be a prospect searching for a search term. Now a visitor may or may not be a prospect based on what OV thinks they meant**, as opposed to what they typed in.
** A purely subjective judgement, based on how much they can make the advertiser pay for it.
I advise folks to call OV with your opinions of this bait and switch scheme.
Sad reality I'm afraid. They have enough hidden behind the curtain to effectively link anything with whatever they want ("where we believe the intent of the user" means that they have a blank check, because they can 'believe' whatever they want).
Maybe some folks will defend them on the basis of making money whilst they can (and it won't be for much longer, surely). The argument is a bit thin I'm afraid - you could use the same line to defend the local bank robber.
My flirtation with Goverture was brief.... I am happy to report. I sincerely believe (and hope) that their prospects will be equally brief.
There goes my $1000 or so a month and $3000/mo holiday ov budget...
Let's see where can I spend it now?
With google, if you type KW you bid on all combinations containing KW, but if you bid [KW KW2] notice the [], you bid on the EXACT match. If you bid on "KW KW2" (notice the ") you bid on all phrases containing both whatever the order: KW2 KW or KW KW2. If you type: -KW3, you will not bid on any search term containing KW3.
That's honest and that gives you full control.
Overture is NOT offering these options. Match Driver is to remove your control, to bid for you on terms you did not choose, to raise bids.
It's bait and switch: they baited us with targeted search terms at bids we chose and now they switch for higher profits.
[edited by: mundonet at 1:59 am (utc) on Sep. 5, 2002]
That is a question worth considering.
When you are spending REAL $ there are other alternatives.........
Beyond adwords/select, what could they be?
Get creative :) Buy some banner ads on niche sites with high pagerank and traffic. Ask for a link under the banner, and just do some good old fashioned SEO. Hopefully the banner/link clickthroughs will bring in customers and the link should help boost your link pop.
I used to enjoy working with OVER but not any more. The SEO I hired recently and I are working on getting it all up and ranking well before the Christmas season hopefully. I had become too dependant on OVER traffic. It will be interesting to see what Yahoo does, I suspect they will release some new form of advertising just before the Christmas season.
I'm also dropping all my bids to $0.05, I suggest you all do the same, or at least cut them down drastically and let OVER know that you are unhappy --- the only way they will understand is by giving them less $$$$, all the complaining and emails won't help at all.
