Miva PPC

[doc816]

Does anyone here use Miva's Pay-Per-Click network for their ppc campains?? If so, how has your experience been?

I signed up for an account a few days ago and so far i'm seeing very poor quality traffic, and zero conversions. I am using the same listings as the ones we use on Yahoo SM and Google Adwords to compare the results. So far it has been a dissapointment.

I use a software that monitors the traffic in real-time, the traffic coming from Miva's network does not even seem like real visitors, average page views by those visitors is 1.

Any comments, suggestions? :mad:

[seobook]

in general their partner network / ad distribution is much more limited than Google AdWords and Overture, so if you do not have click fraud going on you should see far fewer conversions.

as far as conversion rate goes that depends on traffic quality, which can vary depending on what distribution partners have significant traffic in your vertical.

[mcmuney]

I'm using Miva, Overture, Google and Safaari and ironically, Miva is exhausting my funds quicker than I can refresh my account page. I've found some fraudulent activity coming from one of their partners (Findology), large number of clicks per second on same link. I'd guess there's plenty more fraud that is resulting is rapid depletion of my account balance.

I've definitely cut down on using them and will stop after my balance runs out.

[rozovichak]

Are we talking about Miva(eSpotting) or Miva(FindWhat)?

If it is the first one, I used to advertise with them, and they were very poor in terms of quality of traffic. Money went out very fast...

But if we are talking about the US section(FindWhat), that I have found to be very good in terms of quality of traffic. Quantity is not sooo great, but my ROI is very good and the people who sign up are of greater lifetime value than other search engines.

So I hate to be repetitive here, but it largely depends on what your market is, and what is the purpose of you driving traffic. On the whole though the former eSpotting has not produced results for most people I have spoken to in the past, who are from very varied backgrounds...

Also, one general hint, which may be of use to try out, is to try positions 3,4,5 rather than the top(ignore this if you are already in those :) ). But I find that when the so called partners of the smaller networks pick their listings they always pick from the top 3(it pays them the most), so even though you'll get less exposure for your listing, your traffic quality will be better - in theory... try it, it may work.

Hope that's of some help :)

[sschmitz99]

I have stopped using them. ClickFraud at Miva in the areas that I bid is 100%. When I look at the backlinks it's a bunck of bogus doorway pages. The traffic is mostly overseas and clearly artifically generated. Don't waste your money on Miva.

[PPC]

Yup... its too bad because FindWhat used to provide us with very good traffic back in Spring-Fall 2004. Then gradually, all of the clicks became worthless and now its no different than Kanoodle, ePilot, Lycos, Brainfox, or any of the other lower tiered engines that deliver nothing but bogus clicks.

Is anyone having success with any other SEs other than Google, Yahoo! and MSN right now? In the past I have but currently I am having no luck anywhere else.

[Appropriator]

I have been quite successful at generic SEO since 1997. I have also utilized PPC, starting with GO-TO.com (aka: Overture; aka Yahoo! Search Marketing). Watching several of my campaigns with multiple PPC “organizations” I observed unrealistic spikes periodically (normal 20 to 50 clicks per day suddenly jumping to 800 or 900 for a day or 2) and after reporting, I was getting absolutely no credible response or refund from any customer support.

So I recently set up a filtering sever (AdWatcher.com). It works like this. They give you a web address to use so that when your PPC link is clicked on, your “sponsored” key word link goes through the filtering proxy server, which records the pertinent clickers information, then serves up your actual website to the searcher. This all happens unnoticeably to the searcher, who then sees your website. If the same IP address clicks on your advertisement PPC multiple times in a short period of time, you receive an email report that a person has most likely performed fraudulent click activity. From these reports one can generate a “Fraudulent Click Report/Refund Request” and send it to the particular PPC provider.

Therein lies the rub. I have many PPC accounts with various search companies, but only 2 such PPC accounts that I have subscribed to the AdWatcher.com service; MIVA and Yahoo! Search Marketing. In all fairness, Yahoo! has responded, with what seems to be minimally diligent and but appropriate responses, but only after a 2 or 3 day delay. MIVA, on the other hand, has consistently thrown up road block after stalling road block in responding to my “Fraudulent Click Report/Refund Requests.” I’ll abbreviate this, yet provide but one conversation thread I recently had with MIVA after submitting a click fraud report. As of today, I have not received any satisfaction on this or any of the other fraud reports I have sent to MIVA.

MIVA Said:
What is the Dates/Time in Question?
What Keyword(s) are the ones that you notice more clicks on? Did you have any Conversions on PPCs during the dates in uestion?
Did you make any changes in bid amounts?
Were any additional keywords added to the account during the dates in question?
Did you do any status changes on any of the keyword ads?
Did you make any title and description changes during the dates in question?
Do you have any emails that you can send us with your Server log files to view your traffic and compare it with our results?

We will wait for your response to our questions mentioned above and then we will run the traffic review request on your behalf. We usually wan the ads to be place to offline status during the review but as you had mentioned before at this point your ads are in offline status already. It usually takes 24-48 hours in order for us to get a resolution to the traffic review and then we will email you with the results.

Karl Baldwin answered:

I already told you the time and date in the report. Why do you keep asking me the same questions over and over?

1. 01-28-2006 12:22:30 PM until 01-28-2006 12:22:38 PM. 12:22:38 minus 12:22:30 equals 8 seconds, sequentially, on the same day. Sheeeeesh!!!

2. They landed on my Georgia ad so if they used one of my 2 keyword phrases, it would have been either "georgia cabin rental" or "north georgia cabin rentals."

3. I already told you, my website does not monitor conversions because there aren’t any.

4. No, I have not made any changes to bids, keywords, status, title or description.

Below are the 2 fraud alerts I received today from my AdWatcher server. If you can’t figure things out from all of this, I won’t be doing business with you incompetent crooks anymore. I will, however, get MIVA mentioned plenty of times in the dozen or so forums that I contribute to.

1st alert - Subject: AdWatcher Fraud Alert - 01-28-2006 12:22:30 PM
Dear Karl,
AdWatcher has detected suspicious activity going on with your Miva - GA campaign. Please review the details listed below:

Campaign: Miva - GA
Total Clicks: 5
IP Address: 66.44.222.191
Browser: IE 6.x and above
Time: 01-28-2006 12:22:30 PM

Warmest Regards,
The AdWatcher Support Team
http://www.adwatcher.com

2nd alert - Subject: AdWatcher Fraud Alert - 01-28-2006 12:22:38 PM
Dear Karl,
AdWatcher has detected suspicious activity going on with your Miva - GA campaign. Please review the details listed below:
Campaign:
Miva - GA
Total Clicks: 6
IP Address: 66.44.222.191
Browser: IE 6.x and above
Time: 01-28-2006 12:22:38 PM

Warmest Regards,
The AdWatcher Support Team
http://www.adwatcher.com

My final message; click fraud is running rampant with very little protection from those PPC providers. Their incentive is to let the fraudulent clik$$$ go through. Get a PPC filter as it is every bit as important as a firewall. Having a data trail will be invaluable, for your court claims for a $75 refund or a $750,000.
PS – I have no affiliation with AdWatcher.com other than being a very happy subscriber.

Appropriator

[Searun]

I used to use Findwhat, the ROI was not there and their interface was very time consuming and so we stopped using them. Then, they become MIVA, have this new interface and we give them another shot. A few months later, ROI is almost non existent, wasted money again and so we pulled the plug a second time. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

[bigtimeadmin]

I used them for about 1 month, and like the previous posters said they do nothing about reported click fraud. It is amazing how free clicks convert at 100 times the rate that Miva clicks do. I even purposely bid low on certain terms and was getting clicks on those, even though a user would have a tough time finding the ad with a bid a mount that low.

[vegastlh]

Under any name, this is a terrible company. In the year or so that we used them, traffic was fine for about the first 10 1/2 months, but customer service was awful. Turnover was high, and everytime I called my account person (which, granted, wasn't that often - about 6 times until the bottom fell out of our account) I would end up finding out that so and so was no longer with the company, and I would get shuffled off to a new person.

Then Findwhat changed some regulations and a rule about not allowing online gambling sites to advertise went into effect. We should have been fine - we're not a gambling site at all, but we do get some of our betting lines from a site that has links to online gambling. Yes, you read that correctly- you would have to dig around on our site to find the betting lines pages, click through to the site we get them from, then click through on that site to a gambling site. Anyway, they cut off all our US traffic without telling us and only allowed foreign traffic to come through.

Obviously, ROI and conversions tanked, and when I called them on it (you guessed it, only to find my account person no longer worked there), I got nowhere. I put off paying the bills and disputed and disputed- not only did they not give me credit, they threatened us with collections. I finally got tired of wasting my time, and paid the $2k +/- they said we owed.

Horrible customer service, shady tactics, short-sightedness- these are just a few things you'll probably experience if you do business with them. I'd never use them again. They are, without a doubt, the worst company I've dealt with in the 6 years I've been in this business.

[rcnicholas]

Just started a campaign with them yesterday, and in 12 hours they blew through $300 bucks (monthly limit I imposed, thank goodness). The conversion rate I got was a 0.3% for the same terms I buy on Google where the conversion rates are between 5% and 8%. There is no way that this is not click fraud. Even if it was all "legit" non-US traffic the conversion would have been higher - our non-US targeted conversion rates on google and yahoo are just as good as our US targeted. Now to get my money back... :mad: