Interesting tests but probably meaningless

[adamxcl]

I have been a Goto advertiser for about 17 months now. Back when there were some cheap clicks. I've spent many thousands of dollars on them but finally let my account go offline recently for a test.

After a couple days, I noticed my traffic and income dollars stayed right on average. My costs went down to almost nothing without Overture's clicks.

The other interesting thing, Google referrers almost doubled to their highest point ever for these days. I'm sure this is just a absolute coincidence and most likely explains the traffic and dollars staying even.

I'm still offline Overture/goto for now just to see how it goes. I want their search engines but the costs were getting so high...

I also played around with some bidding recently. I bid high, into the top three on many keywords. I spent a lot more money, quickly, but not a single variation in customers to those items.

After several of these tests, I have only to spend a lot of money and not see results for the top spots. I seem to sell better in lower spots, but then do not show on as many searches of course.

Anyone else have insights from similar tests?

[minnapple]

My spin on this is that overture has eliminated many targeted keyword searches by rejecting terms that do not meet their traffic criteria.

Regional keywords are rejected because of lack of searches leaving the advertising buyer bidding on broad keywords that have heavy competition and that deliever lower targeted viewers.

Grandfathered in keywords that targeted bring the best return on the advertising dollar. The new keyword listing restraints are lowering the value of each click.

I still have .01 cent targeted keywords that out perform broad keywords that cost .25 and up.

Because of the cost of driving traffic, I have turn to alternatives to dilute vistor costs while decreasing montly spending on overture accounts.

Early on PPC delivered traffic at a profitable cost, now its business model (based on a reasonable effort to be profitable) is pushing the envelope of profitablitiy and delivering value added services.

Hopefully their business practices do not put them down the same path as the banner advertising model.

Killing the cash cow without offering an alternative is a bad idea.

[john316]

>>Hopefully their business practices do not put them down the same path as the banner advertising model.<<

The consumer put a fast mental "ignore" on banners, i read some research that most surfers do not even "see" them.

Banners are pretty obnoxious and therefore pretty easy to put on the "ignore" list. There was talk of "sponsored" listings someday being relegated to the same fate (you know how much we all love advertising). Has anyone seen any studies or have any anecdotal evidence that the sponsored stuff is heading for ignore land?

[Robert Scott]

adamxcl, I have to agree with you 100%. I've just deposited more funds into my Overture account after letting it go offline for a couple of days. It never made any difference to my income, but like you my Google referrals were up. I'm now testing to see if going back online with Overture makes a difference.

Like you I have also played around with the bidding. Top 3 did nothing but suck funds. I got the feeling that "tyre kickers" just click on the first listings they come to. I also sell better in lower spots although it seems to defy logic. Perhaps it's because the only people who dig that deep are serious buyers who know what they are looking for.

Thanks for the posting adamxcl, It confirms my experiences and is another nail in the Overture coffin.

[adamxcl]

Robert_Scott, That's interesting to hear another similar experiences. I think that john316 has a point that people may start skipping the top spots....especially when they are the same on every major search engine. Again, these are funny numbers and make no sense to have any possible connection but my yahoo numbers are up as well (the google-yahoo connection). It's just odd to see such a jump in traffic. AOL numbers went down. MSN stayed the same surprisingly. All the others didn't matter much either way. All they did was suck money as I wasn't getting much from any of them. I've spent months playing around with the top 3 in different days, times, words....hasn't made a difference so far (except minuses in my bank account)

So in this mini test of several days now, without my huge expense of Overture, my gross went up by 14%, and my profit up by almost 22%. Hmmm, increase income and decrease costs. Sounds like good business at the moment.

[bigjohnt]

Its all about ROI, and you are doing some good homework. I have found over the past couple of years, that the top searched, and subsequently highest costing terms hardly ever have the best conversion.
When you are in the high-bid terms, there is more click fraud potential by over-eager competitors, lots more lookers and less buyers, and an enormous amount of searchers click on number one automatically, then immediately go to two or three. I remember reading somewhere that almost NO buyer takes the first offer. Meaning- that the number one prime position may not be worth all that much more than the number 2 or 3.

If you have the time and resources, I suggest looking into how well each individual term converts, versus lumping all OV traffic into one basket and averaging the cost.

A hundred or so 5 cent highly targeted, but less searched terms may prove a far higher ROI than a couple of .25 or .50 - which will get more traffic, but less real prospects.

I'd be very wary of "match driver" and its effect on "mapping" your lower bid terms to the higher bid "primary term". This has been disatrous for more than one of our accounts. Costs went through the roof nearly overnight. Sure, its more traffic, but the budget exploded.
I expect "cash driver" to become more and more of a nuisance regarding lower priced terms, but until then there is a window of opportunity.

Keep your bidcaps reasonable, but it is still a folly to lump all terms together. Okay for the finance department, not so okay for the marketing department/SEO.

The profit is in the details.

[Robert Scott]

bigjohnt, what do you mean by "match driver" and "cash driver"?

[Mike_Mackin]

In mid 2000 GoTo added Match Driver
"Match Driver takes misspellings, hyphenated terms, compound words, singular/plural combinations and punctuation variations of most popular terms and maps them to the most common form of that term. Let's say that a consumer searched on the term "e commerce." Match Driver would match "e commerce" with all the permutations of that term, such as "e-commerce," "e comerce" and "e-comerce," to the primary form, "ecommerce," and display the same set of results. This tool helps consumers find what they're looking for on the Internet, which enhances our search engine and allows us [Overture] to drive even more traffic to our advertisers' sites."

bigjohnt offers a caution!

If you were bidding on vigra at a good price, Match Driver would resolve it to viagra and that would cost you BIG BUCKS

Now if you were to use their TOOL for the word "book"
681801 kelly blue book
537508 book
367706 tommy book mark
216633 blue book
Match Driver has taken all forms of kelley blue book and resolved it to the most common misselling - lol

[rcjordan]

>Has anyone seen any studies or have any anecdotal evidence that the sponsored stuff is heading for ignore land?

Anecdotal evidence, yes ...but extremely skimpy, I'd be first to admit. While watching surfer1 help surfer2 research travel online, I almost fell out of my chair when the advice was scroll down, the first ones are just ads.

Also, my dogpile referrals to sites not using goto seem to be on the uptick. Given the astounding amount of junk people have to wade through on that particular SERP JohnQ is doing much more than passively ignoring sponsored listings.