went from $2/day to $600/day

overture problems

[beachboutique]

Last Monday, I received an email from Overture stating that I had not reached my minimum click throughs and to add more keywords. I added 25 approved new keywords like they suggested and I was not able to moniter the account at that time because I was away from the computer. Well, on Thursday, my Aunt (the owner) called me hysterical because her credit card was being charged over $900 between Wed and Thursday. I did what they suggested. Don't they have human editors? Shouldn't a red flag go up or something. My daily clickthrough charges were ranging from $.14 to $4.40 a day. That was something that we could live with. Now they want me to deposit the last 3 days worth of click throughs, not taking into consideration what my average was before this mess. They have lowered it though, from $900 to $300. Yippee. That is all "she" could do.

Is Overture, the only way to get to their partners?

Is there anything I can do?

[Shak]

did the new keywords and the extra spend, make money for your aunt and her store?

Shak

[Philosopher]

Actually, I would ask if they made *enough* money or ROI to justify the extra expense.

AS for OV's partners, You're pretty much stuck with them when it comes to getting into their partners in any way other than through the Natural SERPs.

Unfortunately, OV is about money, and what you have just had happen has happened to MANY webmasters.

ANY time you add new keywords to your account, watch the account like a hawk for the first 24 to 48 hours.

[benevolent001]

hi i havent used overture but used google adwords,
can't we specify the amount of money we may want to spend daily in overture as we can do in google

[beachboutique]

We did not make a single cent. We were perfectly happy with the way the account was and we added new keywords because they told us to.

And again, don't they have human editors that shouldv'e alerted me as to a possible error?

What is Natural SERPs?

[beachboutique]

We are disputing the charges and have closed the credit card account and issuing a new card.

The only "helpful" thing the supervisor did was reduce the "deposit" from $900 to $300. No consideration that we have had the account since July and the average daily click throughs was about $2/day.

[Philosopher]

Natural SERPs are the non-ppc listings. Virtually all of OVs partners also have regular organic results, that anyone can get to the top of with enough skill, time, etc.

As for your problem, I feel for you, as I mentioned it's not the first time I've seen this happen. While they do have human editors, their only goal is usually to make sure the keywords are appropriate to your sites content. I have never once heard of them saying "Oh..be careful here". It's about the money and their bottom line unfortunately.

Not that it is any consolation, but you probably got off easy. I've seen people lost MUCH more than this in a day because of the exact same thing.

[RedWolf]

This is one reason I will not go with there options to automatically recharge my card when the account runs out. I am protected from things like this and from click frauders going wild. I only add $25 to $50 at a time just to make sure things stay sane. I had a less drastic situation where I added a couple keywords and my spending more than doubled. I let it ride for a few days, but didn't get a single conversion from them so I cut those terms back to almost minimum. So far I am just not impressed with Overture's ability to deliver me good traffic. The ads are almost the same as my Adwords ads and go to the same landing pages, but they just don't convert.

[iDKris]

i have thousands of keywords, majority of which are very low volume, but some pretty pricey. whenever i add anything, large volume or small, i start them off at 10 cents. for the high volume terms, 10 cents doens't even register. once they're up, i go mess with the bids.

[Rossv1]

We had a similar problem recently, as we ramped up a new campaign with Overture (first time with Overture, we've been running adwords for a year). The first few days went well, but as soon as more of our keyowrds/ads got approved, our daily spend went through the roof! We had the Daily Budget set to $10 per day while we tested the new ads, but we were spending $50 - $75 or even more on some days. A representitive at Overture told me that our Daily Budget tool was not working for our account, and that this is a known issue. It only affects some accounts, but here we are over 2 weeks later still waiting to get it fixed...