Bid Management Software

Experience?

[Illah]

What are your opinions on bid management software? I'm looking to begin several campaigns with several thousand words. Can this be done efficiently without the software?

Right now I'm leaning towards a popular Desktop solution. I have a dedicated server that can host it. Would this be better than the major ASP soloutions?

Thanks.

--Illah

[anallawalla]

Haven't seen the desktop one but the ASP one is great when you have more campaigns than you can count on two hands. :)

[Illah]

Cool, are you talking about the big big ASP solution ;)? Haha, funny how we can't get specific here.

Anyone else have any input?

--Illah

[mike schmitz]

I think proper organization in addition to conversion tracking makes the need for bid management minimal. Most savvy Adword marketers know exactly what is working and what the ROI is at the campaign and adgroup level.

M

[Robsp]

Excel and a proper logbook go a long way. I manage well over 40 campaigns with it.

Kinda depends on the kind of business you are in. Most of my clients are in B2B with medium level traffic which means that doing a once per month indepth analyses in excel will do the trick.

I'd like to look at good (desktop) management software but have not come across any. If you have, sticky me.

My 2cts,

Rob

[anallawalla]

I think we have different interpretations of "bid management" here. Excel is OK for presenting static information, but when you need a tool to *manage* hundreds of bids, i.e. raise them or lower them as required, you couldn't manage them manually without a tool.

Consider bid gaps, jamming, day of week, time of day adjustments, etc. Major PPCSEs give you a limited window of the whole set of campaigns and you can't see which areas need attention. These tools get expensive if you need them to monitor several times a day - our niche is not very aggressive, so twice a day is fine.