Dropped AdWords, Switched all funds to Overture

[randfish]

My 2 advertising people have decided after a month of testing to switch entirely over to Overture and pull all of our spending from Google's AdWords.

They noted that the conversion and click-through rates were both better with Overture, and the clicks actually seem to match up to our web statistics, as opposed to Google, where we could never find as many visitors in our stats as they reported in AdWords - the content match was especially suspicious...

We're pulling about $25,000 in spending for 2 websites (maybe a little more) and moving it over to Overture - I'll get back to you at the end of Dec. and let you know how it went.

Has anyone else tried this? Has anyone else been very unhappy with AdWords' reporting a conversion rate?

[seobook]

that is a drastic shift...

I would try to keep at least a smallish campaign on some of the cheaper words at AdWords.

[MrMackin]

>They noted that the conversion and click-through rates were both better with Overture..

Results will vary by industry and by websites and ad titles do matter.

"They noted that the conversion and click-through rates were both better with adwords" could also be posted by another SEM and be TRUE.

imo

[greenleaves]

In my industry adwords has worked like a charm for the company I work for. So has overture. Unfortunate they droped us (due to our industry, not our site).

How did your guys determin that adwords were "converting" better. How did they determine that your overture acount was getting better ROI (because thats what it is all about, not conversion). And how much did they tweek the adwords campaings. There are so many ways to tweek keywords/bids/titles/descriptions/landing pages that it seems to me a month is a very short time to determine to dump something so big as adwords.

Maybe I just don't like the idea of all eggs in one basket...

[randfish]

I'm not convinced of the idea either - and I agree about not having all the eggs in one basket.

But, they did measure ROI and Overture was a clear leader - when measuring for the same keyword phrases and nearly exact same ads at very similiar CPC, - the visitors through Overture simply purchased more often and in higher dollar volume - whereas 1.7-1.8% of visitors from Google made purchases, 2.2-2.3% of Overture visitors made purchases...

Seems strange to me - I'm going to go back through their stats. One stat that I was able to quickly verify was theat Google's content-match seemed to have an exceptionally high number of visitors but a very, very low conversion rate - not at all worthwhile we decided.

[seobook]

another thing you can test with google is disabling content or search partner ads.

[cline]

My 2 advertising people have decided after a month of testing to switch entirely over to Overture and pull all of our spending from Google's AdWords.

This implies that no portion of your Adwords program is working. If you can identify portions that are working, you should keep them running.

They noted that the conversion and click-through rates were both better with Overture, and the clicks actually seem to match up to our web statistics, as opposed to Google, where we could never find as many visitors in our stats as they reported in AdWords - the content match was especially suspicious...

With the accounts I manage I generally see the same thing. It's also common to see content delivery ads not work well. When that happens, just turn them off. No need to pull the whole Adwords campaign.

We're pulling about $25,000 in spending for 2 websites (maybe a little more) and moving it over to Overture - I'll get back to you at the end of Dec. and let you know how it went.

IMHO there's something fundamentally wrong with this thinking. If it at all makes sense to move spending over to Overture, it means you weren't spending enough on Overture to begin with.

Has anyone else tried this? Has anyone else been very unhappy with AdWords' reporting a conversion rate?

I have had campaigns that work okay on Overture but not Adwords. But I'd never try this. Adwords and Overture isn't and either-or decision. They each should be evaluated independently on their own merits.

[dannysullivan]

They noted that the conversion and click-through rates were both better with Overture
Sure, but is the conversion from Google still good enough? Doens't matter that it's not as good as Overture in your case. If it's still bringing you traffic that converts, traffic that's worth more than the cost you pay for it, why wouldn't you want it? Switching it off only means you're losing out on profitable business, in that case.

the content match was especially suspicious...
I'd switch that off first, then reevaluate.

[randfish]

You guys are right.

I'm going to talk to them about turning AdWords back on, but just dropping the content match component. I'm guessing that you (collectively) have experienced similiar problems with Google's content match.

BTW - Danny, excellent point about "good enough"... Thank you.

[AussieWebmaster]

Turn off content match until you have time to come back to it and concentrate on terms and creatives and a large number of factors.

If you turn off content match and do a comparision I think you will find that Google may push past Overture - at least that is what I have found after disabling content.

But if both are being profitable why limit to the one that is the most profitable?

If the company was a brick and mortar store and there were thousands of customers knocking on the door would they weed out the ones with the coupons and tell them goodbye... or would they simply order more inventory to meet the surge in both types of buyers.

It amazes me that companies will actually say well okay I only want to sell to buyers who offer this amount of profit....
By dropping Google you allow your competitors to make all that money and eventually use it to compete with you at Overture and shrink your profits there.

[PPC]

I would suggest:

1) turning off content match in both Google and Overture
2) writing new copy in Google that focuses not only on increasing CTR but also (and maybe more importantly) drives quality traffic; test new copy every few days (or whenever you have a sufficient sample size) and see which results in best ROI/CPA rather than CTR; **don't forget to use keyword insertion in the title of your ads if possible
3) dropping your bids in Google
4) adding negative keywords, use Overture's search term suggestion tool to see what people are searching for along with your terms (for example if you are selling widgets for $20 and there are a large number of searches for 'free widgets', you have to make sure that you have 'free' as a negative keyword, adding all popular irrelevant keywords as negatives will produce higher CTR and more qualified leads)
5) doing a keyword expansion, you can get very qualified and cheaper leads from misspellings, plurals and words in a different order; often misspellings have a higher conversion rate (along iwth a lower CPC) since organic search results are more likely to be irrelevant and/or poor sites

[knubbi]

I am also currently isolating issues with content vs. other adwords. The CTR totally differs between them.

I will try to see whether narrow terms (in quotation marks) will improve the results over broad terms.

Gunnar

[danielanaidu]

I have also noticed much lower conversion rates from the content ads on google compared to the search ads. I have turned off content ads for some of my campaigns and am monitoring to see if that improves conversion rates. I am also suspicious about the number of clicks reported by google. I have noticed a difference of almost 20% between number of google clicks and number of unique visitors I am reporting internally from my google ads. I'm thinking there might be some click fraud by some adsense advertisers. Anybody else experience something similar?

[sebastian]

my reps refuse to admit that a concept called "click fraud" exists...

:confused:

but anyway, i am in agreement with the folks who believe overture has better conversions, but - google, love'em or hate'em does also convert ...just with a much more expensive conversion rate.

danny's above comment about "good enough" is relevant as even if the conversion costs more on google, it's still a conversion and thus another customer. it's up to the company to 'keep' this customer making the pay off that much stronger in the long-run.

i also might be thinking too deep here, but i believe there are more "younger" people using google and more experienced users and older folks still using yahoo simply because people fight change and yahoo was here long before google's massive growth.

i also think this because my yahoo paid inclusion kicks the a _ _ of all of my PPC campaigns. paid inclusion rocks! ...the CTR is dirt cheap, the listing fall within results which we all know are far more veiwed than paid ads, and the ROI is wonderful.

anyone else think actual search engine *user* demographics may or may not play a role?

[AussieWebmaster]

I have found that if you look at them as portfolios Overture has its moments but larger swings.
Google on the otherhand has the higher impressions and can be worked with more.
As far as the content goes I have found by separating and then lowering the bids so you are 2-3 not at 1 you get good priced conversions by removing the nonperformers after a 30 day test. The ROI is better than search where the bids are higher, since not everyone is using content.

[OptimizeOnline]

One stat that I was able to quickly verify was theat Google's content-match seemed to have an exceptionally high number of visitors but a very, very low conversion rate - not at all worthwhile we decided.

Another thing you should check is where your Google ads are appearing. By default they will appear globally. If your ads are appearing in regions you didn't want (or intend) this will also have an adverse impact on your ROI.

[Dave Hawley]

Are we really comparing apples with apples when we say Overture converts better than AdWords? I have found that the ROI is MUCH higher on AdWords as the CPC is close to 50% of that of Overture.

Basically a $1.00 spent on Adwords gives us about $2.00 back, while a $1.00 spent on Overture gave us about $1.50. We do have AdWords content match turned off.

I put the better ROI on AdWords mainly down to;

1) Lower cpc

2) We can omit countries/regions that are unlikely to spend. E.g third world countries etc.

[fathom]

randfish - if you haven't - check your messages... and then reactivate.

[Windsun]

And just for the sake of argument, Overture can be a nightmare on submissions.

For example, we had about 600 keyword phrases on Overture. A couple of days ago I had to make some URL changes to all of them. Nothing else was changed except to point to a different part (a new subdomain) on the same site.

A bit later I checked on status, and 564 of them had been rejected, and some had been running for 3-4 years. 55 were still "pending review", and 18 had actually been approved.

Way to go, Overture.

[AussieWebmaster]

And just for the sake of argument, Overture can be a nightmare on submissions.

For example, we had about 600 keyword phrases on Overture. A couple of days ago I had to make some URL changes to all of them. Nothing else was changed except to point to a different part (a new subdomain) on the same site.

A bit later I checked on status, and 564 of them had been rejected, and some had been running for 3-4 years. 55 were still "pending review", and 18 had actually been approved.

Way to go, Overture.
I went from Platinum to Diamond recently thinking such a move would improve my Overture experience - the exact opposite and now when I am going back to platinum the rep there quits - too tired with office politics...
The ad reps at Overture care purely about your spending - nothing about quality of the traffic you buy or even your personal experience with the company. I told the rep I wanted back to platinum and was told it could not be done til the end of the quarter.... hey can't stop his commission checks... now where is that number of the east coast head of advertising????

[Mel66]

FYI, I was told by my OV rep that they've been having trouble with submissions over the past couple weeks due to some "new and improved" editorial software. I submitted a bunch of new listings about 10 days ago, and apparently some of them got "stuck" (their words) in the "pending" area. I had to resubmit them or they never would have gone live. Maybe your formerly-ok-but-now-rejected ads have also run into a system glitch? I'd contact someone at OV just to be sure.

The kicker of it is, I found out through this process that my Diamond level rep had left the company in early January. I had been sending her emails, and wondering why she never replied! Apparently no one was monitoring her email box, and no one bothered to notify her clients that she was no longer with them. Pretty poor if you ask me, esp for those of us spending enough to qualify for Diamond.

Don't get me wrong - the rep I dealt with this week was very nice and has been very responsive. I'm just really perturbed that no one told me our rep was gone.

Melissa

[Windsun]

We went from 600+ onlne listings to 28.

The last round yesterday, I added the ?src=overture tag to about 40 listings that did not have it.

Most of those were rejected.

Over 25 of those had just been approved 2-3 days prior, so apparently Overture is rejecting now based on if you add the tracking tags or not :eek:

Some others that have been pending were rejected for "broken site", yet all the URL's show in the list work just fine (and have worked fine for years).

What a bunch of idiots over there.

[AussieWebmaster]

FYI, I was told by my OV rep that they've been having trouble with submissions over the past couple weeks due to some "new and improved" editorial software. I submitted a bunch of new listings about 10 days ago, and apparently some of them got "stuck" (their words) in the "pending" area. I had to resubmit them or they never would have gone live. Maybe your formerly-ok-but-now-rejected ads have also run into a system glitch? I'd contact someone at OV just to be sure.

The kicker of it is, I found out through this process that my Diamond level rep had left the company in early January. I had been sending her emails, and wondering why she never replied! Apparently no one was monitoring her email box, and no one bothered to notify her clients that she was no longer with them. Pretty poor if you ask me, esp for those of us spending enough to qualify for Diamond.

Don't get me wrong - the rep I dealt with this week was very nice and has been very responsive. I'm just really perturbed that no one told me our rep was gone.

Melissa
And with MSN jumping in to the market by year's end they are going to have a hard time holding customer with set budgets.

[Windsun]

"And with MSN jumping in to the market by year's end they are going to have a hard time holding customer with set budgets....."

Well, when they auto-kill 95% of your ads, they are not going to do very well either.

BTW as an update, we now are down to 22 active vs around 620 last week. And all because we wanted to update our URL and add the tracking code.

[Mel66]

BTW as an update, we now are down to 22 active vs around 620 last week. And all because we wanted to update our URL and add the tracking code.
Are you sure that's why the ads were rejected? I'm not convinced that you're not having the same problem with their new system that we had, with quirky rejections and "pendings." We use tracking URLs all the time and have never had a problem, even with (most of) the new batch we just submitted. I still recommend calling them and asking them about it. Remind them they're losing click revenue on 575 listings. Maybe that will get their attention. :)

[Mel66]

-- correction: Revenue on 600 listings. --