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Someone should report them to the DTI as they are in a monopoly/duopoly in the UK. ( That said they will have already formulated a defence)
Guess they will do it in the US as well if they think they can get away with it.
Hopefully the US won't follow suit but the odds are against that.
Shak
Makes Google and Espotting look even better for ROI.
MD
( Smart guy eh?)
In some respect I should be pleased. Because we charge our clients a percentage of what they spend this is good news but I feel a little sad.
It appears to be another defeat from the jaws of vistory move. No doubt some of the tools will be worthwhile, but in a lot of cases the ROI on some of the niche inventory we have will halve, so will have to find twice as much inventory to make the same money and end up paying 4 times as much for the traffic (2 clicks at 10p each as opposed to one at 5p).
More annoying, as a member of the accreditation scheme to hear about it from one of my clients rather than directly (but then I suppose we are just another advertiser) is a poor show. When we recommend a service or product it's important to have some rationale behind it, we don't have the manpower to handle the calls that this is sure to generate, and there is no FAQ.
So Google at 4p and Espotting at 5p are looking good value, Mirago has always been 10p minimum and maybe Overture thought that if they could do it and get away with it then so could Overture. Personally I think not, but time will tell, give us something beneficial for the money and it won't feel so bad, if not then prop the door open for the evacuation.
All terms that have a decent click through have decent competition which means most bids are above 10p anyway. But for terms such as "Widgets Afghanistan" we could get decent ROI on our money, compared to "Widgets".
They push the minimum up to 10p, making these low click, low competition terms more profitable for them and ruining my profits on affiliate programs and niche promotion of websites.
Will have to get as many new terms as possible on before the 6th of Feb as I can think of, to make use of the till 29th March lower rate, then concentrate on eSpotting and Adwords more.
The monopoly thing sounds just about right Hurlimann, but when there really isn't much decent competition what can be done, and that's why they know they can get away with it.
affiliate programs
There are a lot of people (no disrepect to any of them) who are coining it using PPC and paying minimum CPC because they are indirectly advertising.
What you'll probably have is a cleansing of low spend advertisers and then eventually people will come back.
I guess we just need to work even harder on all of the things we know we should do, deep linking URL's good quality landing pages, punchy call to action sales messages. It's still pay per click, so if you get no clicks (the SEO people that Kandevil mentioned) then it costs you no more money beause you get no traffic now.
I just worked out for one of the good keywords we have paid for 630 clicks at 8p a click, so the difference for the entire month on that keyword is £12.60
One thing I would like to see though is the branding clicks for a company URL should be given to you. We have had over 600 clicks at 5p a click for one of our clients on bids on their URL. Nobody else can bid on the keyword, so why not give the advertiser the traffic for those for nothing? Instead this client is now going to have to pay £60 a month instead of £30 a month.
Just a thought!
They are guessing the revenue/profit they gain from this is more than the cost of defending their actions.
> The monopoly thing sounds just about right Hurlimann.
This is their achilles heal: It can be argued Overture has dominant market position. This is covered by the Competition Act 1998. Any abuse leads to penalties of up to 10% of UK turnover for up to three years of an infringement. It is also covered by the Fair Trading Act
Chapter ll of the Competition Act 1998 prohibits abuse of a dominant position in a market if it may affect trade within the UK.
It is also arguable it breaches EC law. Articles 81 and 82 of the EC Treaty are also in play as they have applied this minimum to the UK and not other members of the EEC and as such it can affect trade between the states.
As we only spend about 7,000 USD a month across all the PPC stuff it isn't worth the fight for us as we will just relook at our ROI and stop hundreds of keywords as a result.
However a "class" complaint by some here may at least get their min listings left at 5p.
Think about it as if the CEO of Overture UK:
Lawyers fees, Counsels Fees, risk of fine, risk of losing, bad PR etc
Vs
Loss of some small time revenue to keep a few web aware at 5p so they don't causing a massive cost and bad publicity and effect his Options;)
More quality referrals from the likes of Oingo then! :(
but for how much longer? I'll put money on G & E following Overtures lead
sem4u
Looks like that to me as well
[webmasterworld.com...]
Well the customer service was first rate; they couldn’t wait to help you set up 100’s of search terms at 5p a click. I’m sure that many of the members here played a significant part in building their inventory of listings and long-term customers allowing them to gain large partners like MSN. With that success they have forgotten those who first helped them gain it.
So how do you reward your first loyal customers? By doubling the price.
Yes, I’d agree Google and espotting are looking increasingly more attractive.
Smiley
"thousands of advertisers reach their online marketing goals with one of the most targeted, cost-effective marketing tools available." not anymore Mr Child!
I remember the first price hike with Overture COM was it from $0.02 to $0.05?
There is only one of two things I can do. Either keep Overture if competitors drop out OR :) Hello ESpotting :)
[edited by: sem4u at 10:23 am (utc) on Jan. 29, 2003]
I don't think Overture appreciate that there are no doubt thousands of webmasters SEO's and such like, selling their services and increasing Overture's turnover. What might seem like a simple price increase to them, could make a big difference to the fortunes of these people.
The only positive to note to add is it might get rid of some of the timewasters and rubbish web sites, but I for one will be looking to channel the clients budget into other forms of marketing.
I really think that this will have little affect on them other then to weed out a lot of small advertisers. Even if they lose 50% (which I doubt) of the small advertisers they will stay even with less work. There have been comments in this forum and others in the past that Over no longer wants small accounts. This is just another step on this road.
A couple of months ago it was noted that they had a minimum bid amount listed for each keyword. At that time they strongly denied that they were about to implement minimum amounts for certain keywords. Now with the UK at 15¢+ plus it's just a matter of time before Over US ups the ante. Over DE is now at 11¢ with the Euro increasing in value.
Instead of hiking the costs of bids up, I think they should have looked at how they could lower their costs in the way they do things.
Anyone have a senior contact email address for Overture UK, where we small fry can show our disappointment?
The big difference is this :-
If my client is selling Luxury Boats, tahn 10p minimum isn't a problem, for a potential sale of £30k
However, for my client selling dollshouse furniture at £2.20 a chair, this could mean the end of his relationship with Overture.
I think a lot of Overture's competition will take real advantage of this - and I i'd give it six months before one comes out the woodwork offering 1 - 5p a click
One problem Overture will face is lack of advertisers in certain areas (low profit/low cost items). This will mean third parties will get no results (or not enough for them to make money from their deal with Overforsure) and will start looking elsewhere - such as Espotting, Google and so forth.
the 10p minimum will also make overture uk more attractive to partners and potential partners. maybe we'll see engines switch from espotting? maybe we'll see partner sites listing the top 3 or 4 bids instead of the top 2 or 3?
Do you really think they will care about the small accounts, I don't. I know I will be stopping a load of bids before the click increase to 10p
overture, adwords and espotting listings are displayed on different engines. advertising on only one means advertising to part of your potential audience. you can make a return on all 3 *if* you use them properly.
>>However, for my client selling dollshouse furniture at
>>£2.20 a chair, this could mean the end of his
>>relationship with Overture.
does it need to end the relationship? do customers look for and buy only one item then never return? if so, then fair enough, but if they tend to buy more than one item, there's a fair chance of PPC listings working at 10p as well. modify the site to encourage customers to buy more than one item - make the PPC listings work. there is also something to be said for customer loyalty - once they've clicked through and made their first purchase, make sure you keep the customer. look beyond the initial cost-per-click.
