Should I open an Overture account?

Or to stick with AdWords...

[nervo]

After one very unpleasant experience with AdWords support, I thought of openning an Overture account. But after browsing these threads here I found out many unsatisfied adwertisers. The quality of the traffic, strange billing excesses, non-userfriendly interface and so on... The only positive thing I've noticed about Overture PPC program that thay edit listings much faster than before.

So, should I open Overture account or better stay with Adwords at least until MSN joins?

Can we summarize positive and negative arguments?

[BluBay]

I use both and If was 100% dependant on Overture I would be in a lot of trouble...Bottom line, you cant beat the traffic quality and quantity of adwords (at least for my industry), overture is a good source of extra revenue but I wouldnt use it as my only form of CPC. As of November for some odd reason our conversions have fallen to almost 0% and no one at OV wants to admit to anything....Adwords can be a little difficult at times but nothing compared to sorrow you might face dealing with overture. My advise - open an account and try it out but still keep your adwords running.

[powerstar]

If you like to pay for fraudulent clicks then join right in. If you like real traffic then stay with Google.

I will wait for MSN, I don't think they will pay this dirty Yahoo game

[shorebreak]

We manage spend for over 75 clients, and every single one of them spends at least 20% of their total ppc spend on Overture, and some as high as 40%. ROI is good if you manage spend closely, but not on par with Google. Still, Overture's the only other worthwhile engine in terms of volume and ROI.

-Shorebreak

[powerstar]

Shorebreak,

Are any of those campaigns the CPC close to $5.00 or higher?

Are you monitoring the referrals? Do you know where is the traffic coming from? Is it Yahoo traffic, MSN or others?

[bostonseo]

Most of my clients do better on Overture because you have much more control over your actual placement and CPC prices are usually much lower than Adwords. Adwords prices are totally out of control. I'll sacrifice some conversion percentage for basically 50% less CPC prices on Overture. I'm not saying there aren't problems with Overture, but in the end generates a better profitability than Adwords for my clients at this point.

[shorebreak]

Powerstar, a few of the campaigns (and about 25% of the total monthly spend) is for financial services clints where average CPC on $X00,000 - $X,000,000/mo spends are $5+. We don't look at what's Yahoo vs MSN vs other on our clients' Overture spend, mainly because you can't pick Yahoo distribution anyways.

[powerstar]

shorebreak, we are also in the financial area and for the longest time we were doing very well with Overture (I used to like Overture much better then Google). We always bid around the $2 a click we did not receive a lot of traffic but the conversion was great. Few weeks ago we decide to increase our bid to around the $5+ and start to track the referrals.

As results, out spend went up and our conversion went down. When i start looking at the referrals I noticed a lot of clicks and always on the same few keywords from a lot of different unknown web sites something like 10:1

There is no way in the world that those unknown web sites could generate 10 times the traffic of Yahoo and MSN combine. The results are high spend and low conversion. Actually I never saw any conversion from those web sites, none.

If you stay away from the big financial keywords and you might be fine or if you spend so much that you can not tell the different or in other words it does not effect you as much with your ROI.

I hope there will be enough stink about it that Yahoo will do something about it so we can select the partners where our ad will show just like Google.

[nefitco]

My conversions with YSM are way up. That is I've converted most of my PPC ad spend from YSM to G over the past year. I track monthly and allocate according to CTR. I've gone from 50/50 to 85/15 with G accounting for the 85%. If you've worked with AdW for a bit you'll find the YSM interface painfully slow and far behind the features you're used to in AdW. Don't try to define your geographic market or advertising network w/ YSM. a.) you can't and b.) they don't want you to know where all those clicks are coming from.

From a consumer standpoint- have you looked at the Y search results lately. Take 10 algos, stir 'em up and call me in the morning!

Wait for MSN AdCenter in QI.

[nervo]

Thanks all for replies!

I have opened an Overture account two days ago. Now I understand why the bad words about the interface and such. It's pretty non user-friendly. Now I got tons of new questions :(

But, the most important one is:
Why my account went off today?

I managed to get some listing online ( some of them went online immediately after submission) and today I've noticed that they are all offline and my account is off. I tried ticking the radio button for account set-up ON, but it returned to OFF not alowing me to set it on!?

Someone help please!
Thanks much :)

[nervo]

Ehmmm...
No reply here and no reply from Overture support for three days :(

I think I'm going to let that account die...

[StupidScript]

Usually the reason an account is set to OFF by Yahoo is because of money issues. If your account interface shows a negative balance or a positive balance that is below the "average daily" spend, you'll need to "add money" in order to (a) remove the negative balance and/or (b) have enough money in your account to accomodate a day or so of clicks at the "average daily" rate.

i.e.

Account Balance: $150.00
Average Daily Click Charges: $160.00

= Add more than $10.00 to get the account back ON.

Account Balance: -$150.00
Average Daily Click Charges: $160.00

= Add more than $310.00 to get the account back ON.

etc. ... or so ... although there might be a hidden credit issue ... and they have no idea why these numbers don't add up ... or ... it's pretty messy, over in Pasadena ...?

PS: Don't just *let* the account die, if that's what you want to have happen ... proactively take steps to cancel it and receive confirmation of the cancellation.

[nervo]

StupidScript - thanks for reply!

I understood that they charge your cc immediately upon creation of a listing, right? Not like in Adwords, they allow postpaid for accrued clicks? Did Overture charged my cc for initial $60 monthly budget or not?

After openning an account I made a test listing with a $60 monthly budget. Listing got approved and were online for a day. That day I had 2 clicks and their price is deducted from my $60 budget. It says account depletion in 90 days. But, the next day my account went offline, and my spending were under a dollar!

So, there is enough money in my account but they made it offline anyway. Why? I don't get that....

Thanks for tips!

[awardmasters]

What may have happened is the automatic bot approved them initially and then they were removed when a person reviewed them. Look and see if you have them listed as declined, pending, or removed in the editorial status area.

[nervo]

I had 40 approved and 2 declined listings. Those forty approved were online for a day and then they went offline. And now my account is offline too.

Did they charged my cc or not, if they did what happened with those 60 bucks?

[steveo]

One of the only things I've found good about Yahoo over Adwords is that you can call them and get a real person on the line to answer almost any question you throw at them. I've had an account for just five days now and must of called them 10 times already. Ask away.