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Here's a question that has been asked before I'm sure, however in many cases, it is specifically directed at one particular PPC ("noodleppchead.com worth it?", as opposed to gathering consistent responses comparing several with each other -- or the responses are ambiguous without any stats. Granted this is a highly subjective question, let me see if I can make it more objective.
Everyone's actual ROI (both based on gross sales and more importantly, and correctly, net profit) is going to vary depending on the space they play in. Therefore gross traffic is probably a more comparable statistic.
The bottom line is that we, like many of the rest of you, have tried almost all of them. And, to our dismay, we have found out most of these smaller PPCs are just not worth it - they either don't produce enough traffic to justify even the time to signup and manage an account, or the quality of click-thru traffic is so poor, the ROI doesn't justify the expenditure. It seems like Overture, Google, and Findwhat are really the only ones worth bothering with. But in order to focus this discussion, I need define what the criteria is for "bothering with" a PPC is (for us at least).
What I am interested in seeing is everyone's relative PPC traffic figures as a percentage of their largest PPC traffic provider. Ours averages around this:
Google 1.0
Overture 0.85
Findwhat 0.15
Overture UK 0.05
Meaning, if we get 10,000 clicks from Google a month, we get 8,500 from Overture, and 1,500 from Findwhat. We draw the line roughly around 5% (0.05) and it seems like pretty much everyone else we have tried is around 0.05 or lower - not worth our time. I'd be interested to see anyone else's numbers, just divide the lower PPC's clicks into the highest. More specifically, I'd like to here from anyone that knows of a PPC that gets more than 5% of the traffic they get from Google (using the same keywords of course) and is getting decent ROI?
In general, I consider these more obscure PPCs just money making scams praying on the desperate desire of web marketers/masters to get back that ROI of yesteryear they had on Overture, before everyone and their mom was bidding. Whenever I ask a PPC "Who are your top 3 partners traffic wise" They usually beat around the bush and don't answer my question or their top 3 are hilariously obscure site.
I contest the only way to free ourselves from the monopolistic chains and sinking ROIs of Overture and Google's PPC is not find a better PPC but to get higher *natural* rankings on Google and MSN - which depending on your space can be very difficult, time consuming, and costly.
It sure wouldn't hurt though if there were a few worthwhile PPCs that brough significant traffic (5 or more percent of Google) and decent quality traffic (decent ROI).
Don't bother responding unless you have hard figures to post.
I'm not able to provide any stats for you, but perhaps others can help you?
2/2003 stats from one managed account:
Overture - 6517 clicks - 6060 unique - $15817.59 sales [note: the CPC was half the cost of adwords]
Adwords - 4251 clicks - 3862 unique - $20626.64 sales
FindWhat - 1419 clicks - 1300 unique - $3488.09
Lycos - 443 clicks - 402 unique - $196.41 sales
1 month TEST
epilot - 34 clicks - 34 unique - $139.95 sales
mamma - 324 clicks - 305 unique - ZERO sales
[sorry = massive typo]
[edited by: Mike_Mackin at 10:25 pm (utc) on Mar. 2, 2003]
consultant, I understand what you're looking trying to do to determine a traffic factor, but what do you what to use for a criteria to determine what 'decent quality traffic (decent ROI)' is? Are you looking for a minimum ROI percentage or net profit margin based?
Overture: 3640
FindWhat: 2688
Ah-ha: 2436
Kanoodle: 952
PageSeeker: 784
Search123: 532
Sprinks: 476
Findit-Quick 396
IQ Seek: 308
Mygeek: 306
GoClick: 282
ace
This is the best reason for using the second level PPC SE's. Nevertheless, for that very reason, it is possible to get significant traffic, as my logs prove.
Google 14k
Findwaht 11k
This is their numbers but I thought it was interesting in that Findwhat is catching google. Overture I am new to and I have not solved their submit system so I have a very small campaign there.
The reason is due to phrase match and exact match vs. Overture's Match Driver and Espottings plurals/singular.
As far as others worth their salt, many of the smaller PPC's will deliver traffic of seriously questionable quality. We often measure click/sale ratios and clicks/actions. Typically we achieve results some 50% less from the lesser players than the main 3 of Google Adwords/Overture and Espotting (in UK).
Although the CPC may be less, if you are needing 3 times as many visitors to get the till drawer ringing, or the newsletter subscribers it is a bit of a false economy. And if you are trying to impress potential investors in the company they will want to see conversion ratios above the industry average, so for that reason we tend to tread carefully with lesser PPC's.
We've chopped quite a few from our list of late because they didn't work for our clients, and if they don't work it affects the overall ROI, which is not good news.
