Overture PPC Ads by Yahoo

Overture introduced Pay Per click advertising to the world. Overture is now acquired by Yahoo! and working as search marketing solution arm of Yahoo! With the first ever PPC program, Overture showed the way to make money to search engines. Currently Overture is used to provide paid search listings on many of the top search engines and internet portals such as: Alltheweb, AltaVista, Yahoo, MSN, and many other portals, search engines, and web sites. Overture's top of page placement and the fact that you have lots of room for descriptive copy gives your ad writer more power to generate click-throughs.

Overture PPC Ads System:

Unlike Google Overture has defined its minimum level for every single aspect of advertising. Their minimum cost per click is .10 cents. Also they charge $50 to open an account. It takes 1 week to setup and activate an account in Overture. You must spend minimum $20 monthly for advertising on Overture.

Ad positioning in Overture is purely based on bidding amount. Overture does not consider the click through rate while positioning your ad on SERP. That Overture doesn't consider click volume when determining an ad's position in search results creates opportunity for some advertisers. In theory, some unqualified clicks can be discouraged without causing the ad to be deactivated.
But in recent development, Overture started to deactivate the ad with usually poor click through. However their critical click through volume is lower than Google.

Why to go for Overture PPC program:

PPC campaign is all about words and keywords. It is the only tool by which you can attract your customer. More words are always better. The more you explain in the ad the more conversion rate you can expect.

And this is where AdWords has edge over google. Overture allows title upto 90 characters and description upto 190 characters. And Google allows 25 characters in title and 70 characters in description. Longer copy in the Overture ad allows advertisers to more carefully qualify their clicks. This can eventually improve conversion rates from Overture clicks.

Overture’s network consists of Yahoo, MSN, CNN, AltaVista and Infospace, which means you might reach up to 80% of all Internet users. This helps in brand awareness.
But since Overture offers monthly budget system, it can create negative impression among advertisers as Google is offering daily budgets. Therefore on Overture, if your monthly budget expires before 10th of the month, your ad won’t appear for remaining days or until you refill your account.

You can place exact bids and know right away what your rank will be. If you want to appear in Yahoo top three results, you must have one of the top three bid positions. There is an auto bidding feature that allows Overture to handle your bids automatically.

Overture offers a keyword search volume reporting tool that helps find keywords that are actually used. Jimtools.com offers a combined volume/price comparison service that is very handy.

Overture PPC System and Tips:

In Google AdWords, ads are added automatically whereas in Overture human editors review your keywords and your site. You may bid on a search term only if the web site has substantial content that is clearly reflective of the search term. Also Overture ask their advertiser to rewrite the ad if they are not receiving proper click through.
Also the landing page for visitors must be according to the query phrase. Overture makes reports available for all of your approved phrases.

They may or may not allow you to bid on misspelled words. They tend to reject three or four word phrases that don't have sufficient search volume from searchers. Although they don't have minimum click through requirements you could end up spending money repeatedly on losing phrases. On the other hand, some phrases may have a very low click through rate, yet still produce some good sales. That's in contrast to Google AdWords program where you may have some good sales from a .04% click through rate, then watch your ad get deleted because it does not meet the minimum click through rate or what is referred to as CTR.

Overture will reject superlatives in your titles or descriptions which tend to make the listing appear matter of fact. There is no keyword exclusion option which means your site will come up in irrelevant searches. Titles cannot exceed 40 characters and descriptions cannot exceed 190 characters. Ads display on one line at Yahoo.

While advertising on Overture you must make sure that the site is not framed, as you can’t directly connect to the inner pages. If you bid several related phrases then you ad might appear multiple times on the same page. Also make your landing page according to the promise you made in the advert. If you are offering free white paper then don’t ask them to subscribe to your site or else mention it in the ad. If you don’t offer detailed information and easy navigation then your conversion rate will go down.

Another PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising Resources

With the growth PPC advertising has seen in the last few years, additional services have appeared to help advertisers simply the management of different PPC ad programs.
There are other PPC advertising programs available today such as Business.com, Enhance Interactive, e-Pilot, Kanoodle, e-spotting, ePilot and Search123. Overture has programs for many different countries.

Shopping Search Engines

Shopping search engines have become popular destinations for consumers. Most, with the exception of Froogle charge a price per click-through from their search function. Yahoo's Product Submit charges from 20 cents to 50 cents per click. You'll have to create and upload a list of your products, called a product feed. If you sell products, this is one of the most valuable locations to sell.

Shopping.com also has a merchant program. It charges any where from fifteen cents to a dollar per click. This site also offers good exposure to product shoppers. Bizrate offers a variation on the fixed bidding scheme of the other shopping search engines by allowing merchants to bid on top rankings.

In Europe, Kelkoo comparison shopping search engine has a strong market share, which is why it was purchased by Yahoo. You can bid on top placement for your products and appear across European from Sweden to Italy.

PPC Bid Management

If you use all of the available pay per click advertising programs, it can become a headache to manage your bids without spending all of your time. There are services that can add greater functionality for your AdWords and Overture campaigns, allowing you to do things they don't offer.

Two companies lead the way in, PPC bid management programs. Atlas One Point provides an all-in-one interface for managing PPC bids. Formerly called Go Toast, they offer a free 14 day trial of their service which includes bid management and campaign optimization.

BidRank is another useful automate pay-per-click search engine management tool that takes the pain out of PPC bid management. BidRank will check and change your PPC bids according your preferred ranking. You can set target ranks and bid maximums based on time of day and/or day of week. Basically the primary settings are used when inside the times that you have specified and the secondary settings take effect when outside of those times.

Other Useful PPC Advertising Resources

Clicktracks offers a PPC tracking and reporting feature for any PPC campaign. It can even help you calculate important e-metrics such as return on cost, return on keyword phrase for each search engine. You can compare your returns on paid versus organic search engine listings.

Bidding Strategies - Key of Advertisement on Google

As of now we know that bidding is what decides fate of your PPC campaign. Now lets see what all aspect should be considered while bidding for keyword or key phrase. There are several PPC bidding strategies to apply. Each has its merit, and in some cases, may be more effective with one PPC search engine or with a set of terms. This is just not enough. There are different bidding strategies for Google and Yahoo! Their PPC programs are quite different and hence the bidding strategies also have to be different.

The bidding amount certainly depends on, how much you are willing to pay per click. If you don’t know this value then its better, you stop thinking of PPC advertising. This could be based on an industry rule of thumb or calculated based on internal factors such as profit margins.

For example, let's suppose you're bidding on the keyword phrase "search marketing" but do not know your max CPC. One way to estimate a max CPC involves taking the top 5 bids on Overture and computing the average. The current bids are: $0.51, $0.50, $0.33, $0.32, $0.31. The average is 39 cents. Use that as your max CPC to begin with.

The reverse calculation is very effective to determine how much we can spend per click. Reverse calculation means; calculate the amount to be investment on the basis of revenue you are generating from clicks. Past experience, market understanding and proper research will certainly help to calculate you CPC. Let's suppose you sell SEO package for Rs.100k and your profit margin is 20%. That leaves Rs.20k of profit for each package. Also, assume that your conversion rate will be 1%. For every 100 visitors from a PPC ad, you expect 1 sale. If you have Rs.5k of ad spend to spread over 100 visitors, you have Rs.50 to spend per click.

Also you can decide on it by calculating overall online marketing budgets. If you are willing to spend 10% of revenue on website then your total ad spend is Rs.10k. The conversion rate we have calculated is 1%. Therefore with 100 clicks in mind we can spend Rs.100 per click. As your campaign progresses and you determine your actual conversion rate, adjust the CPC accordingly.

You need to use different bidding strategies for Overture and Google as their programs are different. Google considers past performance and click through rate of the campaign whereas Overture only considers your bidding amount. For Google, use the Overture bids as your starting point in the short term and reduce the bids for the long term if your CTR is high enough.

Biding for a position gives you more CTR and not the number one position. By this you can get higher ROI since top positions are very expensive. Just think of searcher’s behavior. They don’t have any specific query in their mind but they use different combinations of keywords they can think of. Bidding has phenomenon that there are always some big gaps in between the bidding amounts. This is again because of race to reach to the top position. Consider a bidding scenario where biding started at the price of Rs.10. Someone else will bid Rs.11 again someone will bid Rs.12. But the point will certainly come when some aggressive bidder will bid on Rs.30 to obtain the top position without any fear of competition. This gap between Rs.12 and Rs.30 will be beneficial for us.

If you are concern about the first position only then initially bid higher and achieve it, which is very easy to do in Overture. And then by constant monitoring the biding you can maintain the top position. On generic keywords it is very difficult to monitor the campaign constantly as they are popular and high traffic terms. But you can do it on specific keywords, which are comparatively less competitive with higher conversion rate.

If you are biding on very specific keywords, which have less competition and low traffic, then one option is, position the advert and rely on the visitors. This strategy can be considered because, one who will search into such a specific query, he is keenly looking for that particular information.

Sometimes you bid relative to your direct competitor's offerings and listings. If you find your direct competitor at position 3 and you have a better offering for this particular search query, bid just above your competitor, but not necessarily at the top position, thus engaging the searcher's attention with a compelling ad. Terms in this category fall into Quadrants 1 and 2 depending on how compelling the offer is once the searcher have landed on your web site. The bidding strategy works well for price and feature competitive offerings.

What is Bid Management Strategy in Google Adwards?

The most important step before bidding for any PPC program is, understanding the market value of your keywords. And best way to know it is Overture. But there are several bids going around for a keyword. So you can take an average of some top biding amount and can determine the market value of your keywords. If you can afford the market value you derive, use it. Otherwise, use your max CPC. That max CPC could be set for an entire ad group or for a specific keyword phrase.

Track the ad carefully for a few days. Assuming the bid is high enough and generates sufficient traffic, you should have a good idea of the CTR within a few days. If the CTR is good (at least 2%), lower the CPC and see where your ad falls in the search results. If the CTR is sufficient, lowering the CPC should not result in your ad dropping many positions.

Then use trial and error method with different combinations. Run a query and observe the position. Drop the bid by some amount and check the position again. Again drop it and check it. Follow the procedure until you remain in the top 3-4 or whatever desired position you want to be. If your ad's CTR is very good (better than 7%) you will likely be able to drop your CPC in half without a noticeable drop in ranking.

If your ad group has many keyword phrases and there's a divergence in CTR, consider creating multiple ad groups. The more tightly focused your ad group is, the lower your CPC will ultimately become as you weed out poorly performing keyword phrases. Adding negative keywords to each Google ad group will also help increase the CTR and thereby allow you to reduce your CPC.

Do You Know about Performance matrix?

The main aspect of PPC advertising is not exposure, but clicks and sales conversions. The click-through rate is defined as the percentage of times a paid search ad is clicked on out of the total number of paid search ad views within a given period of time.

Click-through Rate (CTR) = Click-throughs (i.e. Total Visitors) / Impressions

Website conversion is defined as the percentage of users who visit your website and complete your primary objective (i.e. purchased a product) out of the total number of users who visit your website in a given period of time.

Website Conversion (sales conversion) = Sales / Click-throughs (i.e. Total Visitors)

So what role does each play in understanding the effectiveness of a paid search campaign?

Standard practice among advertisers is to concentrate on writing ads that achieve a high click-through rate to send more visitor traffic to their website. Unfortunately this general assumption, “more traffic equals greater positive results”, is flawed.
Consider this. Which click-through rate is better?

* A 20% click-through rate for a paid search ad that achieves zero sales (0% website conversion).
OR

*A 0.2% click-through rate for a paid search ad that achieves 10 sales (10% website conversion).

The answer is obvious. The click-through rate, especially for newly setup PPC campaigns, is relative – it is the website conversion rate resulting from visitors clicking through a particular paid search ad that defines success or failure.

Successful paid search advertisers take a different approach. They start with the end in mind by asking, “what primary objective do I want a visitor to complete on my website?” and then they work backwards. They identify the type of visitor and buying behavior that will most likely result in a completed action (i.e. sale, registration, etc.)

In addition, they perceive their ads as automated salespeople who “qualify” visitors. Regardless of a high or low click-through rates, the focus is on generating a positive return from the advertising dollars spent.

For instance, let’s review two different ads. Ask yourself, which ad best qualifies visitors?

A. Pride Scooters Low prices and huge selection of scooters and other mobility equipment.

B. Pride Scooters From $1850 while stocks last. Houston, Texas, USA.

If you selected B. you are correct.

Ad B. qualifies visitors based on their buying behaviors and customer type most likely to purchase a Pride Scooter from the business’ website.

First, the ad states a price point (i.e. from $1850) to attract visitors seeking the website’s premium product while disqualifying ones seeking discounted or lower-priced scooters. A user researching scooters does not have to click-through the ad to find out a general price range.

Second, the ad targets a geographic region since the majority of people who buy scooters demand an actual test ride. If the company is located in Houston, Texas then users from other locations will not feel compelled to click-through the ad. (Ideally a geographically-targeted PPC campaign like using Google Adwords Regional-targeting works best in this situation).

In essence, ad B.’s goal is to pay “per click” for only visitors most likely to purchase their product. This ad attempts to “filter” unqualified visitors thereby increasing the return on investment per click-through.

Ad A. instead spends money on attracting and generating click-throughs from all visitors and relies on the website to filter qualified versus unqualified ones. This is not a wise economical approach especially if no “visitor exit strategies” are pursued.
Last, successful paid search advertisers rely on testing different ads to determine which appeal generates the best website conversion for a particular keyword. They rely on actual visitor feedback to help them determine which appeals are most effective. Once a positive return is achieved then focus is shifted to increasing the click-through rate for the best converting keywords so more sales can be realized.

So “Are you spending money to bring just anybody to your website or visitors ready to buy from you?” Think about ..is Your Paid Search Advertising Generating Positive Financial Results for your website?

Targeting Usage Demographics to Increase Paid Search Conversions

Targeting the campaign to the proper target audience is very important in terms of conversion rate.
Website conversion is when a visitor takes action on your website after clicking through your ad. It is important because it leads to financial results for your web business and generates a return on your advertising spend (ROI).

On internet and for PPC ads, to be very precise, we can target the audience geographically and demographically. Targeting through ads is another part. First we should study the demographic profile of search engine’s users.

User demographic profile study means why visitor chose one search engine over other. It could be because of the functionality, relevance and many other factors that user can perceive and prefer one search engine over other. If you can research into user demographics of Google and Overture then you can create message accordingly and increase your ROI.

To study that, you must know what Google AdWords or Overture consists of! Though there are many sites and search engines in these networks, very few of them are famous and most popular.

Below are the primary search engine usage demographics to consider when developing your PPC strategy:
1.Gender: Male versus Female

In the search engine world it is very often said that ‘Men are from google and women are from Yahoo! and MSN’. And it seems to be very true.
A May 2004 study by Hitwise showed that “55% of women prefer MSN Search while a majority of men favor Google Search”. Yahoo! Search was split even on gender with a greater focus on people 18-34 in age.

A 2004 MarketingSherpa study indicated that MSN’s user profile consisted of time-limited, married females who searched less frequently yet performed greater e-commerce searches. While Google Search was favored by professional males who performed greater news, media, entertainment and education searches with a lesser intent to purchase.

For AOL and Ask Jeeves, AOL is favored by women with less buying intent than MSN Search while Ask Jeeves is preferred by children.

Furthermore, an April 2004 iProspect study uncovered that, “women found paid ads to be more relevant than men did when searching across Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL.”
These statistics are startling when considering their influence on your PPC strategy since women represent roughly 75% of major household purchases and as stated in a Women.com study, control 80% of all purchasing decisions.

2.Relevancy: Paid versus Organic Listings

Another usage demographic to consider for your PPC strategy is “perceived relevancy” of paid versus organic listings. Ads perceived as having greater relevancy lead to higher website conversions.

The iProspect study referenced earlier also discovered that “Internet users are more likely to click on an organic search link on Google, and a paid search result on MSN.” Organic listings on Yahoo! were considered 61% more relevant than paid listings while AOL was split 50/50.

3.Age: Young versus Adult versus Seniors

A third usage demographic to review is age. Preferences among the top five search engines are fairly mixed among age groups; Yahoo! is a strong favorite with 18-34 year olds; while MSN and AOL have a stronger preference among the 35-55+ age group. As stated earlier, AskJeeves is favored by teens and adolescents which is growing in their buying power within American households as stated in a recent BusinessWeek research study.

Conclusion:

Google and Overture offers the best PPC programs and always prefer them.
Google has the greatest reach but conversion rate on overture is high.
Go for both the programs simultaneously
Ad copy, keywords and landing page all are equally important.
Consider customer demographics and psychographics while writing copy.
Use relevant qualifiers to get mote targeted traffic.
Usage data generated from your website is the best market research.
Use keyword-level tracking systems to determine which PPC search engine generates the most cost effective and best converting visitors.