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I manage many accounts for various clients and since late December, it's been almost impossible to get an account set up. They reject most of the keywords and eventually reverse themselves, they don't followup on confirming credit card information, so the account sits there inactive until I do something, they decline listings that should be approved...it's horrible.
I think they are trying to make the titles sound less "addy"..
The consumer would probably be less offended and more likely to *appropriately* click on them if they just called them what they are.
I have paid listings for some sites and I really don't "sponsor" anyone.
They are rejecting several three-word phrases (minimum bid) argumenting that there is not enough traffic for those phrases.
From my logs I have a different opinion..
I think that Overture is useful because sometimes it is not so easy to rank fine for several keywords, expecially on Altavista. My opinion is that Overture do not care too much low biddings, but low bidding have often the best ROI.
Another strategy - to create the best yellow pages on the Internet and funnel most through their own sites - could be worth considering again. If there are enuff people who regard the Web as a shopping mall, Overture itself should be a major destination. The problem is that by having their listings in mainstream engines masqueading as "information", people really are strating to ignore top listings, just like banners.
I wouldn't count on it...I'm not convinced that Overture have a long term viable business model...it all seems to have been though out without any regard for the end-user, the searcher
I think they'll have to work a lot harder than they expect to keep users clicking through
Example: No more spreadsheets for accounts under $10K per month. (Most likely due to abuse from processors who load up thousands of irrelevant terms, hoping a percentage are approved.) There you go, a recipe for irrelevant listings, dropping ROI, subsequent dropping ad revenues, and voila, "Banners II - The Sequel."
I really hope they work it out. I really like having the OV option for some clients.
I find it amusing that some folks are rooting for one search engine or another. For me, this isn't personal, its business. The more choices, the better.
A bad experience or lack of skill with a particular tool or service does not make it "evil", just ineffective, and no longer an option. I don't like a lot of the new rules, and some of their fuzzier "rules" have cost clients' money.
I opened an account earlier this month and it took 12 days to get less than 15 terms approved - and this only happened afer I chased them. Their email stated "We are experiencing
high volume of requests".
Nothing on my account indicated this - so I wasted my time emailing them.
They've been in the PPC game for longer than anyone - why haven't they got a system in place to cope in busy periods? Surely by now they can begin to predict what days of a week / times of year these are?
"Dear Overture Advertiser:
Overture has a minimum monthly spend requirement, which requires all accounts to spend a minimum of $20 a month in clickthrough charges.
Your Overture account xxxxxxxxxx was recently charged $17.40 to meet this minimum monthly spend requirement for March 2002. Please note that we did not charge your credit card, but rather debited your existing account balance."
