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I spend almost $500 (edited) USA a day at Google and wanted to work with Overture. I am just going to give up. I am so sick of their editors I cannot stand it anymore. I post offer, they get approved. I decide I need to change or tweak the tracking url so that I can refine my test results, and they refuse the change in the url. This makes no sense! Nothing else changed except one tweak in my url. They reject it saying "ownership" or "affiliate"
Another scenario, I have offers up, and like most of you, I am promoting offers via affiliate programs. Of course I do not own or manage each website. I had an offer up recently, and I stated clearly "Affiliate" . It went well for weeks. I edited, changed one stinking word in the description and now I get "Ownership" as reason for rejection.
I just do not get it. Apparently they just do not understand the frustration of this game.... Guess it is not worth it...
[edited by: glenv at 7:12 pm (utc) on Feb. 27, 2003]
I fully understand where you are coming from, and have actually forwarded a link to this thread to a senior person at Overture.
Only by seeing what the community is facing will they take notice and make amends.
within 2 hours of forwarding a link to this thread Overture has been on to me and were thankful of alerting them to the problems.
as has been said, changes are coming, and I am as frusturated as the next guy, but we can just wait.
Shak
Overture has priced themselves out of a lot of extra money on listings that are not currently filled by any bids... the same words and phrases that are not worth the 10 cent minimum because of ROI, the same ROI that is sure bragged about on their home page.
I would think that such keywords that are currently not bidded on, or those words and phrases that only have a few bids would add up to quite a bit of money if allowed to bid on at a nickel or less. I know their reasoning at "OverPay" is something along the lines of keeping people from using a "shotgun" approach and bidding on non-relevent terms. I personally would have a list a mile long that would be relevent, but not worth bidding but a few pennies to make a return on investment, you know ROI, because my targeted group is very small. Supply and demand would dictate the best "minimum bid" by the number of bids on the keyword. We all know some are out of control.
I could see new accounts being limited to the 10 cent minimum bid, but would think that a better idea would be this:
Ten cent minimum bids on new keyword bids that have at least the top 5 keywords currently bidded at or above that amount. That way their partners get a good cut of the better bids. But this is where the change needs to be, only makes good business sense: On keywords or phrases that currently do not have any bids or just a few, they should let the "market value" or the bidder's ROI dictate the bid. Be it a penny or five pennies, that is a penny or five pennies that they would not be getting otherwise. By using that formula, they would just line their pockets a bit more, while serving their advertisers with a good ROI. Everybody is happy.
Tell me what is wrong with that logic. Come on, tell me.
G
Nope, you're wrong, sometimes the original listing does indeed get dropped, and you lose a productive listing. Getting it back is sometimes possible, sometimes not.
It happened to me a few weeks ago when I did some tweaking for a client who at the time was spending $300-$400 a day at Overture. His reaction was to lower all his terms to 5¢ and shift most of his PPC spend to Adwords. He's also buying some keyword banner placements directly with other SE's where he was formerly appearing via Overture. Top bids for several terms I've checked have dropped significantly in recent weeks even though it's prime season for that industry. So, not only has Overture lost over 90% of his business, they'll be losing even more because alienating an agressive bidder means that bids will be tend to be lower throughout the category.
It truly makes no sense.
NO tweaking
NO tweaking
NO tweaking
imho
But if Mr. Mackin says it is so, that's good enough for me!
i don't bother with anything i think they'll reject (affiliate etc). any listings that will never change go in one overture account and any listings likely to change every now and then (special offers etc) go in another - that way, if the idiots decide to drop other listings, they don't affect the really important ones.
and i always leave it a day or 3 between rejection and going back in to resubmit etc - gives me time to calm down and get the frustration out of my system .......
What level Overture user are you? I do not really know how to determine this but if you have an account manager USE THEM. I spend roughly 10,000 a month there and I am told I am "diamond level"
As for adding new words I also give a heads up if it is more than 10. And then I call up and complain if they do not pass the editors specs. The reason I complain is that I may have 100 other words that use the same exact description as the ones I just added and the editor may be the only variation.
Even being at the "diamond level" sometimes I have to call a few people to get an answer.
Even being at the "diamond level" sometimes I have to call a few people to get an answer.
It's nice that you can call them and they 'fix' it for you, but isn't your quote above the exact problem. We have to fight over the most trivial of changes because of some over eager editor.
I had an account rep at Overture. She calls me on a regular basis now that my daily spend is about $4.
My standard answer: "Call me back when your editors get a clue."
We sell (for one thing) solar electric panels. These are also known as photovoltaic panels.
A while back we submitted several keywords based on "photovoltaic" - they were rejected as not relevant because the page title said "solar electric panels" (even though the first line in first sentence in bold said "..also called photovoltaic panels...")
I called them and this is exactly what they told me:
Even if I am acting as an affiliate, as I suspect the majority of the advertisers are, just stating I am an affiliate does not cut it. I am advertising a product and my link lands directly on the advertisers site as they have asked me to promote it. Overture stated exactly: "If your client will not allow you to edit the website and say "Brought to you by so and so (me or my company name) it will not qualify.
That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. That would make the clients web site look stupid. What if IBM hired me as an example, they would have to change their landing page to say brought to you by blah blah..
I am sorry but these people are nuts! I asked why a url I currently have approved remains aproved even though my edits disqualified it according to her and she said it was probably because it was a low volume key word.... That makes no sense either.
I am through with them,,, Anyone know of someone who wants my advertising money?
Guess it goes back to adwords?
I spend $150/day on Overture with 121 seperate keyword phrases. Not a ton, but after using this service for 4 years+ -- my opionion on the topic comes with experience.
Reading all the threads today on google rules and lack thereof the overwhelming concensus is: Google has rules live by them or die by them. Ok- Overture has rules too...
Human editors breed lack of concensus and discretion. Algorthyms breed spamming and non-discretion. Just as googles rules are vague (purposely so). Human editors are often vague.
I think this thread is productive, but because I have had to talk with Overture editors only twice in fours years, I must let people know. One cannot afford to ignore Google, one cannot afford to ignore Overture.
With respect, we spend A LOT more a day on Overture and get a good ROI. The results are acceptable to our clients. The editors are not! Email goes to the client and is FWD to us by the client. The time involved cost everyone $.
Understand your frustration.
My 150/day account is for my two firms, a local college, and a guy who makes bean bags.
Why do I bring this up? Because I simply showed the other 100 plus clients how to do it themselves because it was so EASY! Your own account, complete control, complete disclosure, turn it up or down depandant on sales conditions, etc. They love it (ad words too). I close many many deals (big deals) by simply letting a client know about Overture. And then I tell them that other firms will try to make a big secret of this --- we don't act this way. Deal Closer!
You said it best-- We have a big budget and ROI"........last time i checked, ROI is the most elusive and precious thing in our world. Overture is the best example the WE HAVE SEEN for making a human editing system work. They have 559 employees at last count and they are training there as*es off to get the editing part right. We keep this up and they are going to go back to automation. And personally, I would prefer the QUALITY of Overture CPCs compared to Adwords.
Overture cares about quality and they are paying the price! When they have a system that my most modest client can understand.
Yup
Got a new client today that spent $120,197.17 in the last 11 months.
It was easy.
NO WAY
The people had no idea what they were doing.
They just spent $
Whenever I add a URL That is secure, i.e. https:// it gets rejected within a few hours of submitting it because the "Site is down". They have a QA bot that qualifies links before they go to a human editor and that bot cannot handle SSL. I begged them to either fix it or make it clear but nothing has happened. Of course I also have the issues of getting half my account suspended everytime I want to touch my listings so I am not using my account to it's full potential. Everyone loses.
I'd suggest that if you are having this problem then use the multiple keyword spreadsheet and submit it via your account manager. You can then explain the idiosyncratic issues that may prevent the listings going through and the account manager can take it directly to the editors, bypassing the bot that rejects it.
There are a lot of advertisers making ROI inspite of themselves, which does make the true figure scary in comparison.
Easy to set accounts up, definately. Easy to maximise ROI, not a chance.
www.sitename.com/cgi-bin/track-roi.cgi?source=OvertureBlueWidgets
Then the file track-roi.cgi just has to read in the variables and print a Location header to the real position. I can log ROI if I want as well. Now I can change my URL and price without having to go through editing, but of course they still have to stand up to human review in case of random checks, which they will do from time to time.
The title and description are a different matter...
I'd abuse that facility at your peril. We also can do this through our tracking tool. Really useful for testing different landing pages with all other factors being equal, but I am sure if even once the content found was not reflective of the search, the account would be shut down pretty much straight away.
It is very clear though that after I have done everything they asked, they really do not have a place for an "affiliate" of a product.
My commissions are made by obtaining offers primarily through a broker that has better relationships with the manufacturers. They supply me generic urls and creatives for the offer (s). Since the url may say joebroker.com/glenv.cooloffer/123.html and it is supposed to finally point to cooloffer.com/buy.html the url is not accepted.
So I create my own pages on my own domain thinking that since they say "personalize" your pages that they want me to say "Brought to you by " " an independent affiliate of so and so offer...
Nope that was not accepted either.
All editors say that if I send traffic ultimately to www.greatoffer.com/buyme.html that I have to have my own personalized page on their domain that identifies me as an independent rep. I get this from every editor.
I honestly think their definition of an "affiliate" is entirely different than what the industry thinks it is. I suppose their idea is tp prevent spammed or hundreds of the same offer on Overture like Google permits.
Am I correct?
You are absolutely correct.
It's a very grey and murky arena the whole affiliate arena. You either integrate the affiliate information into your own site and add complimentary content, or you re-negotiate the set up you have withe affilated company.
I can sympathise with your position, but, I'd rather have no ads than 100 all offering the same thing.
Somewhere, within the wreckage is a solution, good luck I hope you find yours.
