[webmasterworld.com...]
afaik, NO new premium listings campaigns are being accepted, and ALL current campaigns are due to expire 31st December 2003 (at the latest)
[webmasterworld.com...] is here a snapshot of what/why it was so good :(
Shak
It seems Google knew what they were doing. They're making more money by not running Premium Sponsorship, and allowing the little guy to jump in without tossing down 30k at a time.
They're making more money by not running Premium Sponsorship
I still don't quite get that, though, because it seemed like most of the time they double-served companies. If Ace Widgets ran both a premium ad and an Adwords ad, Google should make more money than if the company just ran one ad through Adwords.
What am I missing?
Shak, this is a little bit incorrect. They do accept new Premium Advertisers from countries other than US, UK and few other english-speaking countries. They will accept new campaign if you are let's say from Albania or Somali (I believe this is true for many european countries as well, but I don't have the list). I believe they are not going to do any real check so actually any webmaster can get his Premium Sponsorship campaign running, the only thing you must do is to mention that your company's headoffice is actualy in Ukraine or Czech republic and provide some country-specific contact info. If I remember correctly they will be accepting new Premium Sponsorship advertisers till the end of September 2003 (but this I'm not sure about, I don't remember what deadline they specified) and will run your campaign till the the of the year 2003.
The source of the information is Google sales people
Shak
the dialogue was approximately like
me: would you accept a new premium sponsorship campaign?
google: it depends... what country you are in?
m: we are an international company and have branches in the usa and Hungary
g: since you are in Hungary we will accept it, let's go ahead
so if someone needs premium sponsorship badly I'd give it a try, not sure what country-verification process would be like, but I don't think this would be real difficult to pretend you are from Hungary/Moldova or wherever else
I am pretty sure that they agreed with you for those specific countries, however i will be checking 1st thing in the morning and reporting back (as UK office is closed).
Shak
they said "no geo-targeting at all, anyone will see it"
in my specific case the google sales person suggested against using PS since the search-terms we were targeting wouldn't give us enough clickthroughs... no problem, we are learning to use adwords and happy with it so far
but since our competitors used premium sponsorship (still using and will be using till the end of 2003) i'd really appreciate if someone who used PS could share his experience
what was the ctr and roi like vs. serps and adwords?
are you guys saying that eventually it will happen regardless of bid
It's not really the bid that gets you up there, more of a bid X CTR. For example, I have one ad that I bid only .05 for but as I am the only person on the keyword, I have quite a high CTR. My ad is up there. It's not happening across the board yet but I think as the PS gets phased out, the emphasis will be placed more and more on the CTR and more of the top 2 ranking ads (which theoretically have the highest CTR for the money they are willing to pay) will be moved up.
non-english google versions still have info on GPS
[google.fr...]
google.co.uk had it a couple of weeks ago but I've just checked and it doesn't seem to have this info anymore
actually the standard google information would tell you nothing except for the "spending minimum"
speak to google sales-staff directly, they are pretty fast to respond
speak to google sales-staff directly, they are pretty fast to respond
As long as you aren't in the USA.
It's not happening across the board yet but I think as the PS gets phased out, the emphasis will be placed more and more on the CTR and more of the top 2 ranking ads (which theoretically have the highest CTR for the money they are willing to pay) will be moved up.
Our highly targeted ads get a low CTR when they are in position 1-2 (anything at the top of the page) and high CTRs if they are on the side of the page, where our general ads get the highest CTR when they are at the top of the page.
I think that people got use to scrolling down past the banner ads at the top of the page and ignoring the first two sponsored listings that it's still happening, but as the side listings are next to the natural results, they are more visible. I forget the number, but the premium sponsor program had a CTR around 3%, where that's a completely unacceptible CTR for the Google AdWords program.
I wish there was a way to easily bid where you come in the top listing for the side panel as that seems to be the best CTR for the majority of our highly targeted ads.
