Overture conversion to sales much lower than Google

[cgchris99]

I have been tracking my coversions and have found that google conversions are higher by about 10:1 over overture.

I am considering cancelling the overture ads and putting the money elseware. Maybe bizrate or something like that.

My market is sporting goods related. Anyone have any opinions on the conversions or recommendations and where else to advertise?

[Robsp]

Conversions vary widely between both Adwords and overture and between products. We promote products that have a similar ratio as yours (and we stopped Overture) and we have products where overture does better. It is very market dependant and I have not been able to find a pattern other than that for us B2B campaigns do better than expected on Overture.

[derekwong28]

The reverse is true with us. Overture is converting at twice the rate of Adwords for us. But the no. of conversions from Adwords is more than 4 times that of overture. Bizrate and shopping.com are worthwhile but the traffic is much more limited.

[mike_ppc]

It always depends, at least to a point.

Generally, G has a higher traffic than Ov, but smaller conversion rate (my guess is it's better targeted).

The most important thing is still how much profit you make, and there are many parameters influencing that.

[steve]

We target B2B, and geo-target the UK and Ireland.

Compared to Overture, Google shows twice as many impressions. The click through and conversion ratios are roughly the same.

[rbarker]

If your desired demographic is younger and/or technically savvy then Google will probably be your best producing SE. If your desired demographic is older and non-technical then Yahoo/MSN will probably be your best bet.

While some may disagree, different SE's deliver different demographics. It's been that way for a long time.

[Wlauzon]

We have had just the opposite. We get a little better conversion with Overture, but they are so much more of a hassle to work with than Google...

[tedster]

I've been using both programs with various clients. I think the biggest difference you can see in conversions originates in the creative, and not really in anything like a demographic difference. AdWords requires just a few cryptic characters and your ad ends up sounding something like a haiku. Because you are so limited by the structure itself, you also tend to really focus on how you use every character.

On Overture you can speak in terms that are more like regular language. But having that room to stretch out can also make it so you bring less attention to the creative itself - and its ability to pre-qualify the click. And when the click is not pre-qualified, then conversions will naturally suffer.

[mike_ppc]

Still, if you are allowed to use more characters, you can express better what you're selling for a larger group of people.
In O. you can "speak" to your customer and describe him what he will find. In G. it's like a telegram, and people might not understand exactly what you are saying.
Even if you use "flavah words" .....

[Natashka]

I am more happy with Overture so far... Yes, I had to wait and fight the long battles with them to be approved, but it was well worth the trouble! The conversion is much better, and by some reason much less fraud. On Google AdSense my competitors constantly click on my ads. At some point, it got so bad that I even had to delete some campaigns.

On AdSense, folks just click on my ad and run away, so they are definitely my competitors! On Overture, even if they don't signup for my services, they still almost always spend some time on the site, so I know those are genuine visitors. And I tend to agree on demographic and age groups.