Pausing Overture listings - your input requested!

O'ture wants to know if you'd like to be able to pause listings yourself

[carter]

I expressed my frustration today to an Overture supervisor about not being able to pause and resume my listings myself online (eg when my hosting goes down and Overture's phone line is closed).

He offered this version of the world's worst customer service reply: "We've got 80,000 customers and no-one has raised that problem with me before". He suggested I invite anyone I know who shares this frustration to email Overture. I said that, given his statement, I'd ask the question on a webmaster forum. He didn't object, so...

Could you please drop Overture a line via a support request form if you would personally like to see 24-7, self-service pause / resume functionality built into DirecTraffic Centre?

I don't think it's possible to post a poll here for tracking how many requests are sent, but a quick reply on here would do just as well.

Here's a cut and paste message to use if you're short on time: " Dear Overture, I would like to be able to pause and resume my listings myself, 24 hours a day, through new functionality in the DirecTraffic Centre. Please let me know when this problematic shortcoming in the current system will be addressed. Thank you. "

Thanks all!

[Mike_Mackin]

This has come up many times.

Thread ONE [webmasterworld.com]

Thread TWO [webmasterworld.com]

[martinibuster]

If that's how they responded to you, that's pretty bad. Was this overture uk?

My experience with Overture U.S. is very positive, I find them generally helpful, considerate, and pleasant.

Anyway, it's a good request but you know, they may have the patent thing to deal with as far as Google is concerned. It's a legal thing as far as I understand it- and not a technical issue.

Added:

This has come up many times.

I think those posts are asking for workarounds.

Not this bloke- He's asking for direct action to make a change.

:)

Welcome to Webmaster World!

[carter]

Spot on - saw those threads, which just confirm the nature of the problem. Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I'm hoping a bit of direct action might help ;)

It was the Ireland office - isn't that where it's all handled from now? Thought they'd centralised?

Don't know about legal issues - just know that I can pause and resume with all other PPC engines, not just Google.

And thanks for the welcome! :)

[webdiversity]

They may well not have heard of that before in Ireland because it's a new set up there.

There will be pluses and minuses for self-serving pause/restart. Personally I am not in favour of it because I feel you'll end up with a bunch of stop/start advertisers coming in at the favourable times of day for sales, open up shop for a few hours, push the ones that keep the system ticking over by bidding round the clock, to the back of the queue, get as many orders they can fulfil and then switch off.

There are reasons why pausing would be useful, like when you know there will be technical problems with the server, but generally speaking there wouldn't be too many other "out of hours" reasons to pause campaigns, and although it might be a skeleton staffing level I think Overture generally cover a decent amount of hours through the DTC, in terms of responding to requests you might make (Bank Holidays being the obvious time).

Maybe if a switch can be turned on for the periods when nobody is available to deal with the problems?

I just think's it a feature that would be abused more than advertisers would benefit from it. No e-mails from me, sorry.

[guddu]

When I used to use Overture pay-per-click for my earlier company, a year back, this facility was availble online. But now-a-days, I could not find it anywhere on Overture and was just about to mail them to re-continue this facility, that I just happened to read your post.

I think it is quite unfair on their part to reply in such a manner. This is not at all professional and would hurt the goodwill of the organization if same type of replies are continued in near future.

I am in total support with you and have pasted the quote in below:

Dear Overture, I would like to be able to pause and resume my listings myself, 24 hours a day, through new functionality in the DirecTraffic Centre. Please let me know when this problematic shortcoming in the current system will be addressed. Thank you

But, I would like it to be more polite and general.

It should be like:

---

Dear Sir/ Madam,

We would like you to please provide us a functionality for all the overture users to pause and resume our listings ourselves, 24 hours a day, in the DirectTraffic Centre. We have been using overture for a long time now and it was there initially. But we cannot find it in the new system.

This functionality to make listings offline/ online ourselves would make overture more user-friendly and would also reduce the unnecessary work load and the time consumed by overture employees to make these small changes to member listings that can be made by members themselves.

Please provide us this functionality as soon as possible. If there are any kind of restrictions or problems as to provision / use of such a functionality, please state the same.

Waiting for a quick reply

Thanks & Regards

(your name)
(email id)

---

Please wait for few days before making a judgement about Overture. I hope no organization would like to woo off their clients.

Just mail them this reply and and then come back to this post stating the answer you recieve. I hope we would get an affirmitive answer from Overture.

I would revisit this post after few days to find what answer you got from Overture or otherwise you may sticky mail the answer to me. I would be glad to have a reply from you.

Regards

Guddu

[edited by: guddu at 5:31 am (utc) on June 5, 2003]

[Chris_R]

There are plenty of reasons for wanting to pause a campaign - the main one being cause I want to do so.

There are many on internet business internet businesses coming of age on the web. If I run a site that requires phone calls from business customers - I want to have the ability to compete harder during business hours, but stay out of the listings which generate Clicks - but no contact.

Or maybe I don't - Or maybe I run a bunch of different things at one time at want to stop one for a while. Overture is shooting itself in the foot with stuff like this.

Chances of overture doing this now: 1%. Chances of them doing this when they start going down the tubes - a different story.

[guddu]

I posted the above mail to them yesterday, through their Support Form.

(I also added a paragaraph :

Sometimes, it becomes necessary for some listings to be made offline for some days (if the URL linking to it is not available online for some days) and again make them online when the problem is resolved. Deleting a lsiting and then again creating a fresh listing is quite time consuming as it has to be reviewed before it can be made online. )

and got the following answer from Overture Client Services:

---

Thank you for your inquiry.

We appreciate your taking the time to share your suggestions for improvement with us. I have passed your feedback along to our Development Team for consideration.

Your honest feedback helps ensure that we provide the best service possible. Please feel free to contact us again with your constructive recommendations.

---

I hope they would do something about it very soon.

Carter, did you post the message to Overture? What answer did you recieve from them this time?

[Visit Thailand]

I definitely think you should be able to pause certain keywords or even the entire amount. Recently I wanted to pause because of the SARS outbreak but could not and so did not add anymore money to the account. Then about 10 days before the end of the month I received a nice email saying I had not hit their minimum monthly spend so I should add some money and get hits rather than just get charged.

Because of this am thinking of forgetting about Overture all the time.

[wayne]

I just cancelled my account with Overture, if they had
the pause feature I would maybe still be with them. I had
made a change to my URL, but Overture would not process the
change until I put my listing back online. The only problem
is the URL I had listed with them no longer existed. Why
would I put my account back online and have traffic sent
to a site that no longer exists for a week or longer until
they got the listing approved. Oh well, I was thinking of
leaving them anyway, the ROI just was not there anymore.
Do much better with other pay per clicks.

[martinibuster]

I spoke with an overture rep today and he told me that pausing a campaign was definitely on their agenda to bring live soon- but he wouldn't commit to a time frame- he only said that this was something he knew they were working on.

[webdiversity]

According to the DTC there is another "system enhancement" on it's way over the weekend (14 hours so pretty major). Maybe this is on the cards.