Alta Pay For Play? Where, Why, When? Who's got the scoop?

[Brett_Tabke]

So the rumors about Alta going ppc or pay for play have been flying for two months. We've heard everything from MSN switching to Alta, to people who swear contracts for PPC services are signed and on the books. This has been going on for 2+ months. Either someone at Alta is performing a market test via the trial ballon method, or they really are on the brink. A very good friend at alta swore that June 1 would see the introduction of PPC at Alta.

Who's got the real scoop?

[awoyo]

I just read the new issue of Danny Sullivan's "Update" and it mentioned nothing about Altavista.

...meaning that if there were any news, there's a good chance it would be in this publication.

[Mike_Mackin]

awoyo

I'm not sure that answers the question.

[Brett_Tabke]

Aside from a few interesting emails, I guess no one is willing to talk in public about it?

[seoboy]

brett,

i havent been around the forums in quite a while, and i'd assume this is common knowledge, but if not here goes:

the AV PPC, as i understand it, is the "featured listings" at the top of search results, which are native AV PPC listings (ie. *not* powered by GoTo). as i understand it, these are fixed PPC rates (same rate for the term of the contract) that are negotiated on an advertiser-by-advertiser basis. originally, they were only taking 1 or 2, but now i see 3 in some places.

fits with my theory from a few months back -- that sites will experiment with GoTo and then consider doing their own PPC, WITHOUT GoTo's help.

isnt this old news here?

-seoboy

[Brett_Tabke]

I was led to believe this would be more encompassing and Ink pay-for-spidering like.

[DrCool]

My thought is they probably have everything ready to go for the most part and they want to wait until the company is on somewhat stable ground before they start this program. They might be kind of worried that people will spend a lot of money and then two months later they will be out of business and have to refund these payments. Just a thought.

[se_jr]

Yep, the AV PPC is actually a pay per impression program. We paid a $35 CPM for an exclusive listing, meaning we where the only advertiser for the term. They will go as low as $15 CPM if it is an open term so make sure you get them down to that. Also, watch out for the salesman!!! Our's was a big time crook. We tried it out and had some very bad conversions. Basically this is due to the GoTo listings. AV does not allow you to submit such long and detailed titles and descriptions.

It does look like on certain terms, if you dish out the big bucks they will remove the GoTo listings altogether for example "data recovery".

Hope this helps......

[seoboy]

some folks are definitely paying PPC for this traffic, not CPM. i've seen PPC proposals from AV for these listings. of course, they'll take CPM when they can get them... esp. $35.

-seoboy

[isugari]

AV's going pay for play? Wonder what's going to happen to their Looksmart Express submit services? Are they going to get rid of the basic free submit option? C'mon, Brett! Dish it out! :)

[Brett_Tabke]

isugari, I wish I knew.

[mack]

pfp and pay for results are all bad for the average searcher because the results will all be an indecation of what the site can affoard as opposed to relevance to searchers query.

[ideavirus]

hi all,

se_jr...could be please enlighten me on this "data recovery"...Thing...

>>>>they will remove the GoTo listings altogether for example "data recovery". <<<<

Thanks...

[Marcia]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, ideavirus.

Data recovery is a very delicate, intricate process that's used to recover data from crashed hard drives. It has to be done in highly hygienic laboratories with tightly controlled environmental conditions by specifically trained technicians. It is a very expensive service.

It originally came up here in context of a thread discussing keywords with very high bid amounts at GoTo.com - as high as $15.51 a click.

Here's the original thread [webmasterworld.com], which is what's being referenced here.

Incidentally, some people miss it when they first arrive here, but at the top left of the screen is a link to search the site. Very handy if there's a particular topic or phrase you'd like to look up.

[tedster]

isugari: AV's going pay for play? Wonder what's going to happen to their Looksmart Express submit services?

I'm wondering about that seldom mentioned LookSmart feature, the PPC Subsite Listing [aboutus.looksmart.com]. It's already touted as getting you into the AV results. I'd like to learn more about how Subsite Listings tie into AV, that is, how they get ranked, etc.

It's definitely one way to get an AV pay-per-click listing, but you also get all the rest of the LookSmart partners.

[ideavirus]

Thanks for the very warm welcome and your very valuable inputs marcia...

Keep 'em coming...!!!

Thanks... :)