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I desperately want to put placements on Overture, but their truly arbitrary and brain-dead approval process and their placement of PPC listings at the top (which leads to the necessity of the brain dead approval process..) hamper this greatly.
Admittedly I am only paying Google ~$300 per month, but my intention is to ramp that up to about $1000 fairly soon.
However, I can not see myself doing that on Overture because the experience is so awkward and doesn't give me the feeling of being in control.
Is this the conensus or am I just such small potato that I am experiencing a 'different' Overture?
It's well worth the patience as I get incredible ROI from OV as opposed to AW
Overture takes three to four days to have it re-approves for a minor change in an ad or a landing page
It depends on how much you spend and what level of service you end up with.
There are many sites that get ad changes approved within an hour or two.
MQ
For me, it depends on the KW traffic. If it's a low traffic KW, the ad is approved instantaneously. However, it still take somewhere between two to four days for a highly traffic KWs.
As to whether they are awful, I firmly believe a bad workman blames his tools, a properly run campaign can work on both, albeit the results will be different for your sector/site so you need to try both to know for sure.
As to whether they are awful, I firmly believe a bad workman blames his tools, a properly run campaign can work on both, albeit the results will be different for your sector/site so you need to try both to know for sure.
Absolutely.
I rmember a chap Webdiversity and I were talking to at 4am one morning, who did not spend any of his 6 figure budget on adwords as he did not understand they system :)
Shak
My strategy with O is to "bottom feed" - I have a ton of kw bids w/O that we are the only bidders on - yet they not only bring in traffic - they convert. We have left the "money words" for the big spenders - the prime target kw is going for several dollars because of the bid wars.
However the bid for that same term with Adwords is about an eighth of that, and because of G's democratic ranking system, I've managed to keep them in the top 3 or 4 due do some clever creatives, etc.
Naturally, I bid on all the "bottom feeder" terms as well, but interestingly enough, G seems to have fewer impressions for the off the wall terms and misspellings.
Overture has the disadvantage of having a system that requires a lot of human input. It's very difficult to hire people who can comprehend the encyclopedic issues involved in search appropriateness at the salaries they're capable of paying. That's a nice way of saying, yes, they are -- for the subject in question -- idiots.
Adwords has the advantage of being a 2nd mover. They've developed a system that's superior to Overture's, as it involves less human intervention. It's also more complicated, which has its pluses and minuses. Its advancements have forced Overture to kludge their system to compete.
On the customer service side they're pretty similar, unless you're talking about Overture UK. They're a basket case. They really need to do something to fix that operation. If I could responsibly serve my clients without using them, I would.
(both accounts our ad is #1)
Of course, it is now quite hard to *find* the impressions for each keyword on Overture.....(coincidence? hmmmmm?...)
Anyway. The much reduced number of impressions (resulting in much less traffic) means thet when yuu factor in the time spent on overture's clunky interface the *real* ROI is crummy.
We will soon be droping Overture.
Of course, it is now quite hard to *find* the impressions for each keyword on Overture.....(coincidence? hmmmmm?...)
Overall impressions appear on the first page you see when you login. Click on any date or run any report and see them broken down by keyword, group, or any other way you want.
Hard to see . . . if you have your eyes closed!
MQ
Hint: It's the column marked "impressions"
Hard to see . . . if you have your eyes closed!MQ
Hint: It's the column marked "impressions"
[ouch]!
by 'hard to find' I did not mean to imply impossible.
i favor seeing the impressions more easily than having to "run a report".
You need to click on 'Personalize this Page' while in the bid management section. And then you can select 'Impressions' to be displayed.
My ( I guess badly made) point is that I find it interesting that (In our case) there are 7x more impressions on G and O makes it *somewhat* more difficult to find the impressions per keyword and therefore more difficult (slightly, allbeit) to make the direct comparison.
IMHO, this is because to the reduced traffic on O may not 'look too good' to advertisers.
Some Overture advertisers will get much better results on Google because the publishers delivering the traffic have got a better market share, or it might be that having 190 characters instead of 70 helps people to ge their message across better.
To go back to the original poster, you should accept the paramaters of each supplier and use them for whatever works. The audience is different so the performance needs to be adapted.
Definition of insanity...... continue to do the same thing over and over and expect to get different results.
Definition of insanity...... continue to do the same thing over and over and expect to get different results.
Well said, webdiversity. Each of those PPCs have their own strengths, and weaknesses.
The demographics they serve are also vastly different. OV has Yahoo which are very different users overall than G users.
You are not just using the PPC, you are using their distribution network. Knowing how to attrack each demographic plays a large part in the success of either one.
If OV suddenly switched to showing ads like G - I would not use my G ads - those ads are created for the G demographic and not Ys users.
The key is to take advantage of the strenghts, and try to minimize the weaknesses of each ad stream you use.
My AdWords terms get better impressions than OV as well, but I don't make any money on impressions.
For conversions, (in my little world) OV runs away from Adwords. Similar number of conversions on far fewer clicks, at lower costs per click - hence much lower cost per conversion. That is a far more important metric to me than cost per impression.
Impressions of 7 times as much on broad match would be expected, currently the Overture publishers are not all carrying broad or phrase match (although some are).
7 times as many impressions would indicate that your ads are 7 times as bad at enticing people to click.
If your ad appears in the right side column on MSN, the whole description won't be shown, just the first few words. Check your Overture ads on MSN, then tweak if necessary to make sure that the truncated version still comes across okay.
7 times as many impressions would indicate that your ads are 7 times as bad at enticing people to click.
?
the CTR on G is not 7x less than the CTR on O.
In fact the CTR on both is similar (within half a %) on the same words. ergo, 7x less impressions multiplied by a similar CTR results in 7x fewer clicks.
If i consider the extra time it takes to modify and manage the O account due to a clunky approval process and a (IMHO) bad interface I question the value of those fewer clicks vs. the time spent on the OV account.
Part of the "I" in ROI is the time spent on managing the account.
The demographics they serve are also vastly different. OV has Yahoo which are very different users overall than G users.
in which ways? How do you know? Is there data to illuminte the demographic?
If we want the goods from Overture we need to pay through the nose. Those top 3 spots are just horrible.
I target only secondary phrases on overture becuase the main ones are way out of reach.
I usually start my PPC clients on Adwords, then extend to Overture, although sometimes I do both simultaneously. I never these days start with Overture.
It's all about "Listing Placement" on the page.
Overture's results are in "Prime" real estate, while G's are relegated "for the most part" to the "step child" area, at the far right side of the page...
