Overture Match Driver Announcement

Just posted to begin Monday.

[Tropical Island]

Just posted on the main page after Login. They will begin "Match Driver" Monday and reduce the number of search terms we have.

[bigjohnt]

I had to laugh. I called to discuss and complain, and they wanted me to give them an account number so they could "add more weight" to my complaint. "Weight" meaning my monthly spend?

SURE... I trust them implicitly. :o :o :o (We need an "angry" Icon.
I'll let them go into my accounts and tweak their Cash Snatcher using my account like they did two years ago.
Now, which one of my clients will I sacrifice ....

<OT Rant>I NEVER use my own name signing up accounts anymore - clients' names only. "Once bitten, twice shy"

I am sick of arguing relevance based on competitors spam, only to have them go in and take further terms out of my accounts.

I played nice long enough, it got me nowhere. I may join the Exodus of Overture Advertisers.

Let the deep pockets play, and let the users hasten the demise of Overture based on the relevan$e they present.
Bring on the FTC, I've had it. </OT Rant>

[mundonet]

I seems that Match Driver is spamming by mapping to the "primary form" the different URLs of the same user, not recognizing that it's the same account, contrary to their own TOS that specifies only 1 listing per user, per search term.

We have these cases of double listings on 26 of our 400 terms (6.5%), raising the bar to outbid at least 1 of them. We wrote to both "Listing Guidelines" & Billing in support to ask for a refund on the excess bid caused by Drunk Driver.

Anybody in the same situation?

[packetproductions]

I think Overture and Yahoo are thinking extremely short term, they are scared and quite frankly they should be, Google is a much better search for users. I also believe there is something fishy going on with Yahoo and Google. They are destroying Overture and this move by Overture will be the nail sealing their own coffin.

Heres the math:

1. Aol drops Overture starts using Google
2. Yahoo signs with Overture but still sends tons of traffic to Google making Google stronger ( why make another search engine stronger).
3. Google starts adwords and gets sued by Overture- no victory for Overture ( Overture is very scared, maybe Yahoo signed with Overture to have leverage on Overtures moves).
3. Overtures traffic starts to decrease a bit ( loss of aol ) and Yahoo is the big traffic generator for Overture and at the same time Yahoo is playing footsee with Google ( Overtures main competition).

4. Overture chooses to cater to the big boys to make more money for themselves and Yahoo ( hoping Yahoo will stick around longer )This creates a losing proposition to its deep and adequate search personality and it becomes another shallow search engine sell out. In the meantime overture makes more dollars but starts to lose clients ( both webmasters and users ) they milk the system short term.

5. Yahoo makes more money because Overture is now charging more with the new program.

6. More people turn to Google because the results are awesome, both PPC and spyder.

7. Overture loses more customers, Yahoo drops them.

8. Yahoo buys out Google and or Yahoo insiders make special deals with Google and move on privately.

My final comment:
Overture is a great PPC experience, they do very well for me but the traffic has leaned out and the sales are not what they use to be. If they go in the wrong with this change, I will be out or atleast drop way the heck down where people cant find me and I feel that in itself is a big loss for Overture simply because the keywords I bid on were keywords that were very closely related to my websites.

Big mistake by giants, but lets not forget, these are smart giants and they know where they are headed.

Packetproductions

[mistah]

Just got an email from Overture telling me they're extending this scheme to the UK now.

[chiyo]

nice math packetproductions!

I too am at a loss to understand that this move by OV will do anything but cause their demise, after examining the general overture serps and our listings as well The only winner I see is short term OV investors who get out very quick.

The losers are -

OV's SE partners who will get poorly related listings from big companies only. (I guess the latter get a bulk discount too? - not sure) Partners will get complaints about their "crappy results" and OV would be the major contributor, therefore they may reconsider their partnership OR people just stop clicking on OV results meaning both OV and the parther lose.

Small advertisers will leave OV fast (thats what OV wants as their margins were not good and negative for many small accounts.) But larger and medium advertisers will also see their ROI decrease as bids increase.

This is suicide OV.

Its good news for small niche sites though, Adwords (to some extent but they also suffer from not niching as well as they could - but that's another story, and other PPC engines (but they are so far behind already they are almost invisible)

Perhaps ex OV niche advertisers will start advertising on these alternatives.

[gsx]

I still can't see the problem, even when reading the info from Overture themselves. Has anyone found a listing which is irrelevant that was not there before?

Overtures mapping example (in the UK email) is "Ringtones for free" would match "free ringtones". This makes sense in the eyes of Overture and many of Overtures users, the ones who seem to be upset are those who bidded on hundreds, maybe thousands of terms and are now getting them reduced.

[mundonet]

gsx: we have dozens of listings for "free ringtones for country x" that are now mapped to "free ringtones". It's a lot less targeted (less relevant) and pools advertisers (raising bids) on a more general term that were not competing before because each were in their own specific market. That's contrary to the initial sales pitch of Overture. It serves only Overture and blanket advertisers, nobody else.

BTW, asking for a refund on excess bids due to double listings from the same user got their attention, they replied in 24 hours and promise prompt action. Let's see.