In an article (http://www.instantposition.com/website-promotion/articles/Paid-Search.cfm) published today, I have commented on the recent flurry of activity in the paid search world. Separate threads in here have dealt with the topics of the MSN "leak (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=7187)," The Yahoo! Publisher Network news (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=7166), and the Ask Jeeves "weaning (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=7125)"

As I described, there are many more options now that must at least be considered, other than just the "big two."

Questions:

If you are SEM's, do you agree that attempting to reach "complete visibility" will require more and more time, and therefore higher management costs? What kind of cost increase will it be? Set-up related hourly costs? Or perhaps an increase in percentage fees for management? Both?

If you are an advertiser, will you still pay those fees to SEM's in order to outsource a very complicated task? Will more and more corporations seek in-house SEM experts over the next year?

I think most would prefer to keep the task in-house as long as there is a person or dept. with at least a general knowledge of how and why it works.

I hear a lot about proprietary notions and small niché markets that people want to keep secret, and wether the outsourced company tells you or not, they are using insight from your campaigns (maybe not exact keywords), but definitely using those insights to pad their bottom line. It is in their best interest after all to bring you the most traffic, as this is how most are paid... off volume. If they see that you are advertising for like products/services and making conversions, they are going to tell another client that maybe they should try "like products/services". This is one reason that I personally don't use MSN. Their proposals contain global keywords instead of the more specific keywords that I have seen to be more effective.

Another aspect is the hidden cost of outsourcing......

Most vendors, at some point, use the shopping comparison engines to list products. Unfortunately, this only increases the number of competitors in your direct space, thusly forcing your PPC advertising budget up. It's like a self fulfilling prophecy.

I, for one, will always self manage the campaigns or teach people in house.