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A problem that seems to have appeared recently is that people are ignoring the Ads now - with so many of the Ads that show up being totally non-relevant - like from eBay, Amazon, and similar - people just don't pay attention to them any more.
I just did a random search on Google for "digital phones". Nine Ads came up. Of those, only 4 were for digital phones - the rest were from eBay, Amazon, BizRate, Shopping.com, etc etc.
Sorry, but I just don't have time to search through all the crap ads when I am shopping - and I suspect that OUR ads are being hit the same way.
MSN search was a little better - 7 of the 12 were at least actually selling phones. But there again, the number of Ads on each page has gone from 3 to 5, up to as many as 16. The more Ads there are on a page, the more they ALL tend to get ignored.
I am still watching the results closely, but at this point I am strongly suspecting that our PPC spending this year will drop 90% or more.
Just make sure you can track ROI. Google makes it easy to track your conversion rate and your ROI. Since we only pay when the user clicks on the ad, who cares if they don't click on the ad. I think it's great to have millions of impressions that I never have to pay for. It's branding. Maybe that user will remember my domain someday and type it in.
Also, try different copy variations. Google can rotate through the ads and monitor the click-through rate for each. It's amazing how slight changes in the ad copy can have a dramatic impact on the success of an ad.
Oh, wait, I just thought of something... If you quit CPC... that might make my keywords cheaper. Hmm... maybe you're right, newspaper ads are kinda cool. ;-)
...the rest were from eBay, Amazon, BizRate, Shopping.com, etc etc.
eBay's got some algorithm going which automagically inserts whatever keywords you're searching for into an AdWords ad...A while back I say a post on another forum which I excerpted here, but the moderators deleted it. It was pretty funny. A guy did searches for a whole bunch of terms such as 'misery' or 'apocalypse'. The serps returned AdWords ads which said something like: "Looking for Apocalypse? Get the best deals on Apocalypse at eBay!"
But the fact is, you can buy digital phones at all the sources he mentioned. And both Bizrate and Shopping.com provide comparison technology to help the consumer get the lowest price, from quality merchants.
I don't think consumers ignore the ads, or eBay and the CSE's wouldn't have the traffic levels they have today.
If you can't compete in advertising channels that don't produce profitable ROI, then don't play in that sandbox. But to say Paid Search is useless now, is far from the truth. We have hundreds of clients that show a better return on their paid search efforts, than on their Organic search efforts. It costs money and resources in both channels, it's just harder to equate resources and expense dedicated to Organic Search efforts, and compute ROI at the campaign level, much less a keyword level.
Paid Search gives you immediate return on your investment, and provides the metrics to track the return on every keyword!
That is something that we just very recently started doing. Time consuming but it is the only way we are going to be able to really compare apples.
"What Wlauzon is really saying is he feels over-run by the Big Boys.."
Yes and no.. they are not competition in the sales sense - but they are in the space sense, since 3/4 of the ads are totally irrelevant - but the lead (I think) to spam ad overload for users, to the point where they pay less attention to the ads because they start seeing so many spam ones with big money names on them.
"that show a better return on their paid search efforts, than on their Organic search efforts.."
I am sure it makes a difference if your organics are showing up high or not. For many of the most relevant terms we show up in the top 1 to 4, what we are trying to hit now are the ones that show up poorly - both by redoing the pages etc, and by targeting niche ads that don't show much, but have a good CTR.
By carefully tweaking your ads to increase your clickthrough rates you can move way above your big dollar competitors.
I've seen many instances where a max CPC limit that Google says will give me a 5 to 10th ranking spot, after a few months of close attention and tweaking, can actually reach a ranking of 2 to 5.
This is the reason why, for most of my clients at least, Google is far superior than Overtue.
For one of my largest clients, many of their keyword phrases have top bids between $1 and $3 per click. However, we get 3000 to 10,000 high quality clicks every day for an average of $0.13 each. I believe their more well known competitors pay five to ten times that rate.
I think that big names like Amazon and Ebay have a huge disadvantage in CPC on Google. How many people have not yet heard of Amazon or Ebay. If they wanted to purchase that widget on an auction or from Amazon, I think most people would have gone there in the first place.
We now spend about 5x as much with Google as we do Overture, and it used to be about 50-50, mainly because Overture is such a pain to work with, and Google seems to have better tools. I can also rotate ads to see which ones are doing best on Google.
But even then, we have dropped our spending on a lot of the broader keywords - for many, was getting lots of clicks but no sales. We have also added in a ton of negative keywords, but only been in a couple days so too early to tell what effect. One advantage of niche keywords is that the biz.com type spammer ads don't seem to show up near as much.
What Wlauzon is really saying is he feels over-run by the Big Boys.. But the fact is, you can buy digital phones at all the sources he mentioned.
We sell a very specialized, expensive widget. You WON'T get it on Amazon or eBay. Ever. Part of it's name though is a very popular cheap widget. It is a bit like "car" compared to "lunar rover".
So we do AdWords for "very specific and expensive widget". However, the ads get flooded by Amazon, eBay & affiliates selling the cheapo-widgets. We rank #1 or #2 for queries, because we have the more specialized keywords. And even our CPC is low because our CTR naturally is much higher. Nobody in search of a "lunar rover" would click on a "best deals on cars" ad.
Still I wonder why eBay & Co do it... And it's just annoying to searcher to see so many clearly unrelated ads...
If your making a living off PPC marketing then its just like any other business of balancing risk vs reward and KNOWING who your market is.
An investment in management tools and constant attention is the key to PPC.
Don't forget that unlike other media PPC offers you instant gratification and instant risk. If your selling snow gear and you have the seasons first snow blast coming through be ready to spend a lot - you may not convert as much but you also have to figure out non monetary conversions as a bonus as well.. (whatever they may be - new email signups, repeat site visitors, word of mouth and name recognition)
Also keep in mind that the above scenerio can be happening at different types, different places and even at the same time - depending on how your marketing your product/service.
so keep the news in mind, keep the trends in mind and most importantly listen to the world your customrs live in and be pro active instead of re-active to your markets whenever possible - as that is what PPC allows you to do.
In terms of the original questions posed as the topic of this thread: Is PPC dying? Is it becoming useless? Well, for most of us surfers, searchers and legit PPC advertisers - those of us who aren't eBay and Amazon cluttering up page margins with spam - perhaps it is.
If my educated guess is right, then it's more like a wholesale discount for major customers.
What I'm saying, anyway, is that there is competitive bidding for ad placement according to certain rules. Then eBay and Amazon are allowed to use a different set of rules which give them special allowance to circumvent the normal bidding, rules which aren't disclosed to the other bidding competitors. That is then a fixed auction.
I'm not an attorney and I don't know what the law would say on the matter, but intuitively it seems like it could be legally questionable.
You buy software from me. Huge amounts each month. I make you a special deal for that, which gives you a bargain but leaves me with a nice revenue I can count on each month.
Then Joe User comes and buys ONE piece of software from. If he's good at negotiating he gets a discount too. If he promises to buy one per month, he gets an extra discount. But it will not be the discount YOU will get, and neither do I disclose to him WHAT discount you get.
I buy advertising from Google. They can estimate how much I buy each month. They tell me the minimum click is 0.05 EUR - take it or leave it.
eBay buys advertising from Google. Again, Google can estimate how much they buy each months, and these estimates tell them there's a huuuuuuge amount of clicks coming each month. They COULD say the minimum click is 0.05 EUR - take it or leave it. Then eBay would either leave it, or it would reduce the number of ads in order to keep the budget they have set themselves. More likely, though, is that they are waving the dollar bills into Googles face and say that is what you get each month, but we want maximum exposure! I wouldn't even be surprised of they negotiated a monthly flat rate or lump sum.
Room for litigation? Maybe. If somebody is pissed enough about this, they may want to make charges. But for now, I just call it free market economy.
IF Google and eBay (or Amazon or....) are doing themselves a favour, is a completely different question!
seeing "Get it at ebay" on almost all your searches starts to affect you subconsciously...
Amazon and eBay are NOT paying the minimum 0.05 EUR per click, but much less.
I'd think so, too. I'd bet there's a special relationship (flat fees vs. PPC).
NOT an auction since the final award by the auctioneer is missing
The auctioneer is the guy with the wooden hammer, who looks expectantly into the audience, waiting for a higher bid, and then hammers a wooden block after a 3-2-1 countdown. The law in my country says, that this action is absolutely required for any proper auction. Well, not necessarily the hammering of the wooden block, but a human supervisor with final authority who decides which party has won the auction.
This authority is missing in eBay, because eBay is purely time-based. This is why in my country, eBay is not considered to be a proper auction! As insignificant, as this may sound, it has huge legal implications. For example warranty issues or refunds if you return merchandise are completely different if it is an auction, compared to a regular sale. In my country, if I order anything via the internet, I have a full no-questions-asked full-refund right to return the merchandise. In an auction, there are very, very limited rights to return merchandise. Since the court says, eBay is NOT an auction, in my country I have the FULL right to return ANYTHING I have bought on eBay (as long - and here comes the caveat - as the selling party is a professional seller). Quite severe implications, don't you think?
OK, this was pretty off topic, but probably necessary to explain what I meant.
So on PPC programs (Overture, AdWords, you name it) you enter a competition, and not an auction. A permanent competition, not a single auction event. Once you have auctioned the Fabergé egg, there is not another one. Once I am the highest bidder on a keyword, the keyword is still there, and you can bid higher.
See what I mean? It's the eternal flow of demand and availability. It's pure economy. And whoever cuts the best deal wins.
