$200 Initial sign up price (16cent min bid) at Overture Korea

too much?

[GrendelKhan TSU]

bizarre-ly, during sign-up it SAYS "free" sign-up (I am Korean/read Korean), but then bites ya with an almost $200 initial sign-up deposit for your initial campaign! Also, minimum is bid is about $0.16! I double checked...and I still don't see where the "free" part is.

shhheeeesshh! talk about making up for acquisition costs!

Now...in a new PPC market (ie, korea), I assume reaching critical mass is an important factor....and I imagine that this is going to slow the pace (especially with competitive PPC, Zingu, offering free sign-up)..regardless of having major affiliates.

Obviously, they think that's the sweet spot between fast adoption and making up for the minimum-guaranteed-revenue deals they made with Daum and MSN and dreamwiz--which unofficially probably totaling at least $15million in guarantees. BUT STILLL! I know I stopped to rethink testing it out when it came down to the initial payment.

Don't know how that will play into Google's eventual Korea AdWords launch and the famous Korean nationism (ala Zingu.com) and rapid "me-too" competitive website implementation (ala Naver and Daum crush YahooKorea).

Did they start out like that in Japan?

I really hope that doesn't apply to ppl with current accounts in other countries.

[chiyo]

How do OV's rates and ROI compare to their competitors in Korea? As a Korean you know that Korea has some of the highest business and cost of living costs in the world, so i would suspect this may be reflected across all advertising costs. We also fall out of our chair when we see quotes from Korean companies for our own business area.

Agree it would seem sensible for OV as a new entrant to come in at a lower or at least same price (with more advantages) than existing market players. Maybe they are betting on their global brand name, but as you know in Korea, that usually does not count as it may do in other countries. I hear Koreans have more distrust of foreign brands than other markets, so OV MAY be making a fundamental mistake in that market.

[bill]

Overture Japan started out with minimum bid prices roughly half of what Google was charging for the AdWords minimum. The minimum bid in Japan is ¥25 which is still higher than what you're paying in Korea. I think that by the time Overture made it to Asia their thinking was not to attract the webmaster masses with $0.01 clicks, but rather to target corporate advertising accounts. The higher initial click prices really aren't attractive to a lot of the mom & pop operations and probably weren't designed to be.

[GrendelKhan TSU]

How do OV's rates and ROI compare to their competitors in Korea?

only one PPC competitor in Korea to OV, Zingu (www.zingu.com).....

Zingu: rates are 50won minimum bid for Zingu (about 4cents)
OV: rates are 200won minimum bid for OV (about 16cents)

Zingu: Free 25,000won first time sign-up. (aobut $20)
No monthly minimum and 5000won "refill" minimum to account.
OV: 200,000won first time sign-up (about $180). don't know about monthly minimums or refill.

I don't think ROI is comparable as of yet, since Zingu is fairly new and OV launched like 3 days ago. (I couldn't find a single bidded result on OV)

Maybe they are betting on their global brand name, but as you know in Korea, that usually does not count as it may do in other countries. I hear Koreans have more distrust of foreign brands than other markets, so OV MAY be making a fundamental mistake in that market

Some may disregard this...but I would NOT underestimate this factor...especially with recent tensions with the US. There many many examples of this directly effecting foreign business success here.

[GrendelKhan TSU]

I think that by the time Overture made it to Asia their thinking was not to attract the webmaster masses with $0.01 clicks, but rather to target corporate advertising accounts

I'm sure that's correct, but still Korea is a very unusual market in many regards...dominated by conglomerates with corporate advertisers that don't really follow the OV idea of marketing (necessarily)...ugh...tough to explain...well...lets just say we'll have to see.

Also, Japan is expensive even to Koreans. So I can not speak as to whether their values are compariable.

I still say OV was somewhat forced into a high price situation because of the huge debt they entered into the Korea market with (as I said, OV promised about $15 million *!*--at least--in guarantees to its affiliates). Yes, OV can afford that in an overall sense...but OV expansion strategy still has to pull its weight.

And their are still a bunch of Portals in Korea not on that OV list (and they've had 8 months to try to close those deal).....

hmmmmmmm....

[bill]

I don't know how closely the Korean market will parallel the Japanese market, but when Overture entered the market here PPC was a relative unknown. It seems to me that the PPC market in Japan has a lot of the traditional Advertising Agency people jumping in now. SEO is a difficult sell due to its complexity, but PPC is something the old world advertising set can understand. This is easy to explain to the upper management and sell.

The price that Overture set for minimum bids in Japan I think is fair considering the market. I actually expected them to come in a lot higher.

[GrendelKhan TSU]

It seems to me that the PPC market in Japan has a lot of the traditional Advertising Agency people jumping in now.

Do you mean as advertisers? or as promoters (as part of their marketing mix)?

[bill]

...as promoters (as part of their marketing mix)...

The traditional channels are well established and difficult to break into. Ad agencies have a lot of existing clientele here and they seem to be pushing PPC a lot more than SEO. PPC falls in line closer to traditional advertising. It requires little or no technology to implement and appears to be a good match for the ad agency set.