Go Toast/ppc?

[critter]

HEY ALL..

I'm looking for some insight from the PPC/Paid Advertising Pro's of SEW...

Anyone ever used http://www.atlasonepoint.com, formely GO TOAST?

I am beginning a fairly hefty PPC campaign, across a few engines, and am not sure if it is better to signup for each PPC campaign on the engines themselves, or to use http://www.atlasonepoint.com and use their Big Manager which allows you to monintor your PPC Campaigns across multiple engines, using one interface.

Thanks and much appreciated..

Critter

[Chris Boggs]

I would definitely use them or another management-provider if you are going to start a "hefty" campaign. That is unless you have someone in-house that can dedicate the time and has the ability to analyze the complex data and suggest modifications to your campaigns...

We actually had a booth next to a presentation of their's in San Jose and I was impressed with their technology.

[shorebreak]

Regardless of whicever bid management solution you use, I recommend you open your accounts with the search engines directly, for a couple reasons:

1) You'll get more help from Overture and Google's account managers if you do. They're very helpful when starting a campaign, especially if you know what they good and not good for.

2) No vendor lock-in. I haven't used GoToast myself, but can imagine that it's gonna be a lot harder to switch away from GoToast if you do *everything* through it.

[Chris Boggs]

good point, self-management is always the best. but if you don't have the time or resources to do it...locking-in might be an acceptable term. I certainly wish I wasn't locked-into my cellphone sometimes :(

[Wail]

Heh. I don't get this... Look at Atlas' pricing structure.
Beginner: $79.95 a month for up to 50,000 page views, Advanced: $649.90 up to 50,000 page views, Expert: $1709.80 a month up to 100,000 page views.

The clients I work with produce millions of page views per month. Millions. These are multi-national and national companies with famous brands. Even if we just take a million page views that's $17,000 extra a month. What sort of pricing structure can the SEO agency provide to include and cover for that?

There would be no way you could use Atlas OnePoint for any sort of organic/natural ROI. You'd have to keep its action tags exclusive to PPC. In fact, you'd almost have to create ring-fenced areas which can only be accessed via an incoming PPC click just to stop useless calls on their action tags. At this point the introduction of Atlas OnePoint must begin to taste rather unwholesome for the client.

Am I reading these figures wrong? I really did think GoToast, sorry, Atlas OnePoint was aimed/able to deal with the high-end of the market. These figures, as I read them, say otherwise. You'd be better off writing your own bespoke software.

[Chris Boggs]

True, at half of the 17k/month level you could hire someone in-house to do an excellent job with less expensive software.

I like the structure and pricing that I've seen of the new Urchin 6 ASP version coming out...it looks solid to me and perhaps more affordable.

[shorebreak]

It never ceases to amaze me how marketers only seem capable of looking at the cost side of the equation when it comes to bid management solutions, and not at overall ROAS (cost of solution included).

People have the mistaken notion that a keyword mgmt tool can only automate what a human would otherwise do equally well, and that's simply not the case for all keyword mgmt systems. If I improve returns on a $200K/month spend by 40% while costing 10% of spend, that is a great solution compared to a $500 piece of software that only improves returns on search spend by 5%.

Do people understand this, or is it simply that folks don't believe there are increased returns to be had?

[Chris Boggs]

... at half of the 17k/month level you could hire someone in-house to do an excellent job with less expensive software...

shorebreak I was referring to overall cost here. I agree with your comment.

[Wail]

If I improve returns on a $200K/month spend by 40% while costing 10% of spend [snip]

A 40% improvement? 40%? I think that's entirely unrealistic. I was looking at established and successfully trading companies and looking at how a SEO agency could incorporate Atlas OnePoint into their pricing structure.

[shorebreak]

I regularly see top 200 paid search advertisers whose $100K+/month campaigns see sustainable 40%+ improvements in ROAS with budget and keyword list remaining essentially constant.

It can be done, absolutely.

[cline]

But 40% improvements over what, exactly? I see plenty of home-built PPC programs for which 1000% improvements can be made.

[Wail]

You're not talking about saving $17,000 by using Atlas Onepoint to help optimise your bids. You're talking about saving $17,000 each month and every month.

$17,000 is just the Atlas Onepoint costs too. I was looking at whether an SEO agency, with costs on top, would use Atlas - and I really doubt it.

[Chris Boggs]

I have been looking into using Urchin V6 ASP version, which is much more affordable, and measures all traffic. We do not have clients with millions of page views, however our total client base has that many. As I re-read your previous post, I began to see your frustration. To me as well as you, only a complete tracking system would come close to being worth that expense-depending on the amount your are spending on PPC.

That being said, as we all know, research is the key to effective marketing. If Atlas One offers this product at this price-someone's buying it and the cost is being justified-you would think?

[shorebreak]

Hey Chris, read your post and have the following comment:

I agree that research (= knowledge) is a key to effective marketing, and that certainly holds true for SEM, but when you're dealing with thousands of keywords on mulitple engines, constantly changing bids and conversion rates, doesn't the ability to act on research within that pin storm of data points become impossible if the system (Urchin in this case) can't act efficiently and effectively on the data it's aware of?

That's the problem I have with the search tools space right now; vendors are great at tracking data, but horrible at acting on the data at high volume.

[Chris Boggs]

analytics software should be able to handle the "pin storm of data" (as you eloquently put). Yet it is really the interaction between the software and the human that gives the most value to the product. If you get that kind of software and cannot understand it or make changes as needed, then you are wasting your money.

Who will create the first system of automated "acting on the data?" Perhaps "Cyberdine Technologies?" ;) (a Terminator ref. in case you don't remember that one)

[Annie]

ClickLab seems like another reasonable option if you're willing to do without Atlas' great bidding rules - anyone got any experience using them?

Also - are there any PPC professionals out there using a good tracking tool that allow clients to log into their account and even white-label the interface with their agency profile?

[Discovery]

I have not found much conversation about Overture's Marketing Console. It seems like an intriguing service and affordable. I have just finished reading through the implementation process, it looks to be both a tad cumbersome and time consuming to set up. I'm not totally confident that at the end of the day I will be getting accurate data to react to.

Has anyone set up and used overtures Marketing console?
Or perhaps point me to a discussion where this has been hashed out.

Thanks

[shorebreak]

Discovery,

Questions to think through with regards to OMC:

1) Are you comfortable with the search engine knowing the returns you're getting from advertising with them? Put another way, if search is your best marketing vehicle wouldn't you want to keep it that way by not letting the SE's know what your returns have been?

2) Do you need a system that works on both Overture AND Google, or just Overture? OMC can't optimize Google Adwords.

3) Do you have simple or complex business goals you need to manage to? As far as I'm aware OMC can only track and optimize to one revenue event, whereas you may have several different types of revenue events.

[Discovery]

Thanks Shorebreak,

We do have fairly simple goals and transactions. We generate leads for one specific service. We do have to make assumptions on lead/sale conversions to determine total ROAS but we can pass estimated rev charges to thier system pretty easily to get that number.

This service does not have mulitple products nor repeat customers so we dont have to look at complex models of up-sell, cross-sell and such.

So in many ways I suppose we are pretty lucky.

One thing I found out is that in the marketing found on Overture for Marketing console suggests that it does all this great keyword optimization. (View their online demo). The fact is the Marketing console is one product and you have to upgrade for another $149/month to get the optimizer product.

Also, you must set up the account in a very specific way for the optimizer to work. This is not clear in their marketing nor techincal literature.

All said and done if we increase our conversions by only 5% it will cover the $300 monthly charge with ease.

Thanks again for your input.

[AussieWebmaster]

ClickLab seems like another reasonable option if you're willing to do without Atlas' great bidding rules - anyone got any experience using them?

Also - are there any PPC professionals out there using a good tracking tool that allow clients to log into their account and even white-label the interface with their agency profile?
I use two apart from my log analyser NetTracker... KeywordMax and WebSideStory... depending on what you require the systems to do both have very good prices.

They have white label abilities and they are on top of their respective games... what GoToast has on top is the individual attention of a manager I was lead to believe... same as Did-It which if we were to outsource is where I would go.

[AussieWebmaster]

ClickLab seems like another reasonable option if you're willing to do without Atlas' great bidding rules - anyone got any experience using them?

Also - are there any PPC professionals out there using a good tracking tool that allow clients to log into their account and even white-label the interface with their agency profile?
KeywordMax offers a white label solution