PPC Affiliate Sites - Boon or Bane (PPC Campaign)

Are these sites delivering ROI?

[IanTurner]

We've had a few discussions about this kind of site over the last couple of weeks so maybe we should try and find out a little more about whether they are delivering what the advertiser wants.

So here are a couple of thoughts

1. Are these sites bringing in more traffic on your PPC campaign?

2. Is the quality of the traffic that they are bringing of the right standard?

[Bobby_Davro]

I would be interested to know whether the quality of the traffic, and value for money, varies from affiliate to affiliate as well. Since all the main PPC companies are doing the same thing, we can directly compare them as well.

[exmoorbeast]

Good point. My clients prefer Toxic lemon traffic as they have seen it around and have probably used it themselves. One client even used it to find a notebook while on vacation to the US and thought it was the next Google!

Some of the other sites are a bit less prominent in their list of hits. May be it's the industry we are in, but some of the sites discussed in WW don't even appear on our logs period, which is strange, as we automatically optimise for Inktomi and the major engines that seem to be powering PPC affiliates.

[IanTurner]

What you will find with all the PPC affiliates is that some sites get lots of traffic and others almost none. This appears to be inline with the markets where the PPC affiliates are generating traffic.

It also depends on which PPC Providers you are using for your particular PPC campaign.

This could lead to some interesting options for optimising PPC campaigns.

[Smiley]

> Are these sites delivering ROI?

Yes, traffic that converts is worth having from any source :)

[TinkyWinky]

traffic that converts is worth having from any source

Exactly - I benefit from ToxicLemon, Limesearch, RedHotChilli and a host of other ppc affiliates.....

I have a funny feeling that the return and ROI will be wildly varying depending on the sector - partly due to user knowledge and familiarity.

[IanTurner]

Most people who are running PPC campaigns know what their ROI is for the campaign - and it does vary from market sector to market sector as most people are aware.

The thrust of this thread is whether the PPC affiliate sites are giving as good an ROI as the 'traditional' PPC sites such as Google, MSN, Altavista, AOL etc.

[HenryUK]

Whatever the ROI I can't imagine that any of these sites will survive for long. They're unbelievably irritating for the user, and they are beginning to feed off each other, so (unless you know how to avoid them) you can go from Google results to another set of results and on and on without actually getting to any "real" content. As they feed more and more useless pages into proper search engines (I guess they just add new pages automatically based on search terms input) they will clog them up more, and Google and the rest will - rightly - ban the lot.

I wouldn't therefore make it part of a long-term strategy!

[chrisuk]

"As they feed more and more useless pages into proper search engines"

I think there is a measurable difference between a PPC partner that has content of their own and uses PPC associations as an additional revenue stream compared to Cobranded PPC sites with no real content of their own. I think therefore that future filters designed to stop the later would have to find someway of still appreciating the former.

Afterall if you operate your own directory with say a sponsored links product your pages are still unique and worthy of indexing. However if your site is effectively a replica of PPC content found easily elsewhere then the value of indexing such pages is not as high.

Should one search engine direct users to the pages of another? Well if those pages are new and refreshing and offer a different slant on the original query string then maybe. I think the real goal though must be to avoid mass content duplication, thats not that helpful in a search.

[craigtubby]

Actually, I don't think thats right at all.

Talking from the point of view of a searcher rather than a SEO - It annoys me something cronic when I search for baby stuff, I want a result that I can click on that takes me to that particular item.

What I don't want is a page that brings up links to PPC links of other sites, most of these are then shopping comparison sites, rather than individual items.

It sometimes taking me 3 pages before I even get to a site that I can buy what I want.

[Bobby_Davro]

Craig,
we have had that discussion many times here, and I think that most people agree with you. The thread is about the quality and quantity of traffic provided to webmasters and whether they are happy with it or not.

Remember that a lot of webmasters had sites die in the Florida update and many previous Google updates, and PPC is the only way that they can bring in steady business. For them, if they can't get natural SEO traffic, such PPC affiliate sites are great news; if the traffic quality if good.

[exmoorbeast]

I think we will see further growth in this market, and in many areas the CPC ( cost per click) will come down. Players like Find What.com make Internet Marketing extremely cost effective in the US because they have been ale to secure huge inventories from many different areas of web publishing. Arguably the CPC is so low that PPC has become a massive marketplace in the US. It is taken that Europe nearly always inherits market trends from the US, so what we should be seeing in more contextual ads, more PPC, more players, and a vastly complex yet much more accessible marketplace from what we have today. Evidently this trend is already appearing with the emergence of US players and products.

edited spelling!