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Right now overture does not deliver alot of volume and their best partner, MSN.com, will soon be gone so quality will hit the toilet. The good news is that bids should adjust down with the decrease in quality, however bids in MSN will be artificially to high as advertiser runs to be number #1 until there is a market adjustment.
MSN wants market share not profits right now, everything they have come out lately has been a loss leader, xbox, msn music download (buy 1 song get 5 free!?), they like to be category killers and bless for that, the search engines will get a much needed kick in the pants to clean up their act and get serious in this business.
Also, I've lost so much time/money trying to navigate Overture's pathetic interface and argue with them about their ridiculous "editorial" decisions, I frankly don't think your projected scenario could happen to a more deserving company ....
I wouldn't mind seeing them fight their way back if the increased competition forced them to be more service oriented ....
I personaly have had great trouble with the way MSN first set up their directory submissions. They did finally get things worked out, but I bet they have trouble with their pay per clicks for the first few months.
I for one will wait a few months to let them work out the bugs. Then I'll see if MSN is worth the time.
MSN isn't going to make Overture or AdWords go away, the "big 3" in search will be Google, MSN, and Yahoo - and to reach those users, you would have to advertise on AdWords, MSN, and Overture. To ignore one of those 3 markets would be silly.
I also believe that the new style of CPM advertising from G will take off as a number of smaller players have been acting as middle men between potential advertisers and publishers and shown some success
All in all watch the whole playing field change over next 2 years with fierce compittion by big 3 to gain publishers but also give good ROI for advertisers
many of us forget that behind the big 3 are just as many business MBA's as maths PHD's and they will come into their own in the future
steve
They will still be a player and a must for advertisers because they have yahoo, but the cut in volume and quality wont justify their high CPCs and thus they will suffer huge revenue loss.
The biggest losers in this are the so called tier IIs, especially findwhat, as they will be pushed further out the share of the PPC pie.
If advertisors quit spending with Yahoo! due to a lower click cost or customer service, they will only be hurting themselves by reducing a source of quality traffic.
The way I see it is that they will lose one big publisher but gain a few thousand of small ones when their "Adsense killer" comes out.
Besides, anyone who doubts Overture should take a look at this:
[marketingvox.com...]
They should do something and offer some revenue generating at in Beta form to publishers and capitalize on the Buzz that they have created. Next year MSN will come up with their own AdCenter and that will already hit the market.
for us adwords ROI really sucks compared to overture.
what is more important, these days Google SERPs also lacks quality.
don;t know what is driving Google stock though!
DigialV- Your right overture usually has the better ROI than Google but at alot lower volume. At least with Google you can scale to justify the lower ROI but what will happen when overture loses MSN? ROI will sink down, probably to Googles level now (maybe lower?) but volume will also decrease. Advertisers will still use Overture without a doubt, its a must, but would scale back if the lower ROI does not justify it, they will take a financial hit without a doubt.
DigialV- Your right overture usually has the better ROI than Google but at alot lower volume. At least with Google you can scale to justify the lower ROI but what will happen when overture loses MSN? ROI will sink down, probably to Googles level now (maybe lower?) but volume will also decrease. Advertisers will still use Overture without a doubt, its a must, but would scale back if the lower ROI does not justify it, they will take a financial hit without a doubt.
I spend the same amount of money on AdWords and Overture (about $11k a month each) - Overture delivers more than twice the results. Like I said before, both are well worth the money and I wouldn't consider ignoring either one.
The thing about search engine advertising is that once the visitor finds what they're looking for, they're not going to be looking anymore. So if the "perfect customer" happens to be searching in Yahoo, you should want to make sure they see your ad because if they DON'T they'll see your competitor's instead. If they like your competitor, that's it - they'll make their purchase and never get a chance to see your pitch. Omitting ANY major search engine is just silly.
The reality is that everything you guys are saying about Overture is also true for Google. Microsoft has already said they're going head to head against Google, and as we all know, when Microsoft wants something they get it. MSN is ultimately going to offer an "adsense-style" program, and because they can afford to run it for YEARS without making a penny, they'll easily undercut Google and pay out higher percentages to their content providers than Google could ever afford to do.
Why do you think Google has been buying other companies? Because they know that Microsoft is going to kick their ass, that's why, and they know they need to be more diverse than AdSense.
So....my data says Google Adwords is slightly better.
Chris
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 12:52 pm (utc) on July 15, 2005]
[edit reason] please - no outing of sites or specific search terms. [/edit]
I have been with AdWords since it's inception.
Give me Google any day of the week. My recent (last 7 days) confrontation with Over/Yahoo reinforces my preference for AdWords.
Plus, an inside source told me they won't even be beta testing it until '06.
