Is Premium position worth it?

Costs going up for PPC. Is premium listing worth the money?

[Meryl_Smith]

Hi!
I have seen my costs skyrocket on Overture and Google for the key words I am using. We are selling niche business software for small and medium sized companies, and it often takes 6-24 months to make a single sale, for a variety of reasons. Because of this, it is very hard to get any kind of ROI statistics.

With the costs for bidding into the top 3 positions getting higher and higher, I am wondering if I should drop my bids down to be in, say, position #7 or 8. In some cases, the difference is from $5.00 a click to $1.00.

Does anyone have any ideas on whether you still get google or overture clicks if you drop to a lower position?

Thanks for the help!

Meryl

[buckworks]

My experience with AdWords is that traffic does go down if you're bidding lower, but there's not nearly such a sharp demarcation as there is with positions below Overture's top five.

With Overture there is a drastic drop-off in traffic once you're out of the top five positions. It doesn't dry up completely, but the change is dramatic.

There is something of a compensating factor here, in that it's the really motivated shoppers who will drill down far enough to find you at position umpteen. So, while raw traffic numbers go down at lower positions, the quality of the traffic sometimes actually improves.

[daroz]

For all but my most targeted keywords I do not bother going any higher then 2, and sometimes 3. the PPC just gets outrageous (.99 for pos 3, > $2.00 for pos 2 and >$6 for pos 1 -- not on my dime). As long as you're 'near' the top of the pile you'll find your sweetspot.

[Meryl_Smith]

One of my biggest concerns has been that if not in the top 3, the search engines don't display the ad. Is that true at all?
Thanks!
Meryl

[chiyo]

Hi Meryl,

yes it used to be that only the top 2 to 3 in overture were displayed on search engine partners, which is our only interest. However, lately there have been more models where sometimes you do get displayed, even at a very low position. I dont know who has a good guide. At the moment we are thingking of ditching ov as er cant stay up in the top 2 or 3, so feel its a waste of money not to be in AV etc. However we would like to see any definitve statement of what positions get into what partners and how.

[Visit Thailand]

I am still new to Overture and adwords.

What I have found in my short time is that if I am not in the top three we do not get (m)any hits so we normally remain in two behind someone we do not want to compete with.

This though is for highly targetted keywords direct to a product and not general.

We tried general and we found that the bids were alive and growing at such a rate we felt it not worthy.

Therefore we stick to highly targetted keywords and remain always within cost, and always in pos 1 or 2.