.And the Sun Sinks Slowly on Google's Domination of PPC

[mark1111]

Besides having royally p***ed off their ppc customers, it now seems to take forever just to sign in and make any changes to my account. I'm trying to sign in now (Sunday morning), and I'm sitting here watching the hourglass. Same thing happened last time. What's going on with these people?

[Victor022]

Im not noticing any major problems signing in.. but I almost wish I did, because when I do get in I'm usually disappointed. I'm trying to get over the secret relevancy factors thing but one thing I still don't understand is why 10 cents is the set interval for bids. Everything just works.. not as smooth.

[ember]

No problem signing in, but Google is losing us as an advertiser after 2 years of using AdWords. The better our keywords do, the more they want to charge us. A point has come where no matter how well the keywords do, we can not make a profit. I'd think they'd want to make SOME money off of us and keep us by lowering the minimum price, but they apparently would rather lose our advertising dollars all together. Their choice. I am tired of dealing with them.

[Jon_King]

Apparently someone has missed the G financials, PPC is huge, profitable and growing.

[ember]

I am happy for them.

[inferno]

their profitabilty is slowing down however, and with the addition of msn ppc, it will eat into their profits as well, plus this new system, while increasing their profits, will also, i feel, in the long run decrease their advertiser base.

[kaylowe]

Nnot having any trouble w/signing in to my adwords acct. I agree that they are a royal PAIN at times - they flagged my ad a few days ago as needing an online pharmacy ID, and it had absolutely NOTHING to do w/pharmacy. Crazy!

However the only other decent competition (YSM)has an interface that is an even bigger PAIN! And the reporting SUCKS big time! I'm still seeing stats in my "manage search" reporting that I know are not from yesterday! At least adwords reporting is close to real-time.

Kay

[ember]

Google is king of the hill right now, but they won't be forever. Nothing lasts forever. Everything ebbs and flows. Someone else needs to figure out that there is a lot of money to be made by catering to the little guy because there are so many of us.

[luke175]

I know I'm going to get crushed for saying this but just like banner ads, the current wave of PPC will die.

As long as there relatively easy ways to create revenue for yourself through click fraud it will slowly kill PPC.

I suspect that once Overture/Y open their contextual advertising to a broader base their advertisers will see a drop in effectiveness.

When you have an income in the billions from advertsing primarily (as G does) and it is estimated that 20% of it is fraudulent- you have a major problem.

And trust me, on the inside Google is very worried about it. Fraud kills advertisers' campaigns quickly and sooner or later we will see an alternative solution.

I suspect companies like Adbrite will rise quickly as they are not affected by fraud like traditional PPC is.

[justshelley]

luke175, I agree that ppc will eventually fade away. Not go away...just slow down as new Internet advertising takes its place. I've been involved with Internet marketing since the beginning and yes, just like banner ads, marketing fads come and they go. I knew when I got into PPC that it would be a short but crazy adventure and I don't think its over yet or even close to being over but I'm still keeping my eyes and ears open for the next great Internet advertising invention. :)

[toddb]

Why is adbrite less likely to have fraud? I have noticed that this year click fraud on google is way down. This is just based on my limited observations but we can really see it.

[ddogg]

As long as Yahoo! continues to use Overture's horrible system Google will continue to dominate.

[luke175]

On ADbrite you buy an ad slot for a certain time period be it a day or a month. No one benefits by clicking on links. It isn't PPC technically.

[Laker]

On ADbrite you buy an ad slot for a certain time period be it a day or a month. No one benefits by clicking on links.

What/how do you think ADbrite sets the rate for the ad slot?

(I don't know anything about ADbrite.)

[luke175]

I'm kind of under the impression that the website owners set them.

I've seen some really bad deals and some really good deals there. It looks like you enter the desired pricing and then users can choose where they want to advertise.