Bid Management Software

What's the best bid management software out there?

[webhound]

Hi there, I just started as the online marketing manager for this company and they have been using a piece of software called - BLEEP -.

The problem with this software is that it has way too many errors connecting and making changes as per the KW properties. Sometimes it connects, other times it does't, sometimes it reports it can't find the URL, etc... Always some sort of error.

Plus you can't apply changes accross all bids, which when your dealing with almost 300 terms can be a tad tiring.

Does anyone have recommendations on some decent bid management software that actually works 99% of the time and won't break the bank?

Thanks.

[webhound]

No one has any suggestions?

[vinnie2227]

I personally do not like software driven programs like this. You need to research some of the web based services...Atlas OnePoint, Efrontier, Did-It, etc...

[webhound]

Whats the advantage of a web based system over a software based system?

[shorebreak]

One advantage is that of scalability. A fairly large infrastructure is required to handle millions of daily software-to-software interactions between the keyword mgmt solution and the search engines, and likewise for all the modeling/simulations that need to be done.

[SeattleRedSox]

Atlas is probably the best thing out there right now depending on your skill level.

I've been getting the same errors with BidRank and it's due to a technical issue on Overture's end (shocker)

[vinnie2227]

I disagree about Atlas being the "best" thing out there. Granted, if you have less than 15,000 keywords to manage, you might be okay. If you have more than that, they openly admit that it would be a learning curve for them to manage so many words. We've got closer to 40,000 words and are will have 100,000 by the year's end.

[shorebreak]

SRS, the same was said of the cart & buggy until the automobile came along.

Question: why are there numerous mentions of AOP on the Overture thread, yet on the AdWords thread AOP questions all boil down to 'does this work on AdWords'?

Last I looked, Google accounted for 60%+ of the ppc market.

[Houndstooth]

I'm also in the process of researching/evaluating different bid mgmt software tools.

Shorebreak, I've seen your question on a few threads regarding 10:1 interest in Yahoo vs. Adwords mgmt solution. My thoughts are, even though Google is ~60% of the market and a "black box", its algorithms make it a more stable platform for positioning, cost, and ROI - especially for the top 1-3 ads. Most of the other platforms operate on straight auction, so there's an infinite amount of leapfrogging and strategy taking place that just doesn't happen in Google. So from my perspective, an investment in a mgmt tool would probably provide 80-90% of its benefit on Yahoo, at least for the clients I manage.

Other opinions?

[Ogopogo]

I use Atlas One Point. It is not bad but not great either. The customer service team is the best part of AOP, they help a lot.

[Underture]

ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND WORDS! I have trouble as a small business operator managing and paying the advertising costs on Yahoo and Google for 45 keywords! Our monthly costs are around 2200.00 per

How in the world can a person or persons at todays costs manage this kind of keyword volume? The average cost has now risen to unrealistic levels!

Yahoos reporting has become so erratic and unreliable, that you might as well get out your crystal ball and check there!

We have tested keyword terms by shutting them down, and 48 hours later yahoo is still reporting click throughs! They are selling your position to search engines so small and irrelevant that it's a total waste of money and it takes them days to collect the information. You think your paying all this money for targeted advertising, It's actually splattering advertising!

Finally; I see all to often how many posts there are in defence of Google & Yahoo? I can only assume these people either work for them, or they are not living the day to day frustrating activity of managing advertising accounts with them! It all comes down to control, and with Google and Yahoo you have absolutely
"NONE"!

[vinnie2227]

"ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND WORDS! I have trouble as a small business operator managing and paying the advertising costs on Yahoo and Google for 45 keywords! Our monthly costs are around 2200.00 per"

I should say that I work for a company and there are two members in the Online Marketing team. We use a bid management tool to assist us in managing our ads so we can concentrate on expanding and finding the losers as opposed to spending the entire day managing bids. As well, our current online marketing budget is in the range of $125,000+ per month.

[SeattleRedSox]

In response to Shorebreak below, my guess as to why AOP gets mentioned so much on the Overture boards is due to bid managment. Since you can't use bid rules on Google, using AOP to pull bids from Google doesn't require much discussion.

"SRS, the same was said of the cart & buggy until the automobile came along.
Question: why are there numerous mentions of AOP on the Overture thread, yet on the AdWords thread AOP questions all boil down to 'does this work on AdWords'?

Last I looked, Google accounted for 60%+ of the ppc market. "

[eurokc98]

I have been using dynamic ppc. Tried ppc pro and didnt like it much. Bidrank doesnt support adwords last time i checked. Im currently using this to manage around 10k keywords. Fairly easy to manage and generally no problems. Anyone have any other programs, atlas seems to be very expensive, and really didnt like it when i used the trail!