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August 2003 |
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By: Joop Rijk, Editor |
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Paid Placement Search Listings
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Choosing Between Overture and Google
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Web site owners operating on a tight advertising budget often have to choose between placing paid search ads on Overture or Google Adwords. So how do you decide? Here are some facts that may help you with making your decision.
Advertiser Support
Despite its quick success, industry watchers say Google is less experienced than Overture in serving the needs of advertisers. Overtures paid placement program has been easier to operate by the inexperienced advertiser or web site operator. The Google AdWords bidding process is more complicated because placement is driven by a combination of bid price and ad popularity. In addition, Google AdWords lacks a good third party automated bidding program. For Overture there are a number of auto bid programs available that give the advertiser more control over the bidding process and budget than Overtures build-in auto bidding feature.
Pay-Per-Click Price
It is more difficult to find good deals at Adwords for specialized, highly targeted keywords. Google often commands an above 5 cents minimum even when no one else is bidding on a keyword phrase. Some industry analysts have estimated that Googles AdWords program commands more than the average of 40 cents that Overture is currently charging per click.
Click-through Performance
Research conducted recently by comScore qSearch, an independent market research firm, revealed that 78 percent of click-throughs from Google listings to e-commerce web sites came from Googles editorial or algorithmic search results. Google reportedly attracts a more sophisticated search audience than Overtures partner sites Yahoo and MSN. People searching at Google know they get high quality, relevant algorithmic search results and are therefore are less likely to click on sponsored ads.
Click-through rates for Overture listings on Yahoo and MSN have measured consistently between 5 - 20 percent for more general keywords ranked in the top-3 positions to between 20 - 40 percent for highly targeted keywords.
Partners
According to market researcher comScore qSearch, AOL Search attracted 19 percent of the US Internet population in May, which was unchanged from January 2003. It beat out MSN, with 15 percent of the Web traffic in May, but falls behind Yahoo with 25 percent and Google at 32 percent.
However, Google AdWords largest partner, AOL Search, isn't playing up commercial listings to the scale of Yahoo and MSN. In the past year, Yahoo has placed more prominence to commercial search listings, displaying more text ads at the top and to the sides of its search results and throughout other pages on its Web network. In contrast, AOL is still experimenting with how to place Google's text ads throughout its Web properties.
Conversion
Other key findings from comScores research reveal that click-throughs from Overture paid listings convert better and generate higher revenues then those from Google AdWords paid search listings. Overture paid listings produced a conversion ratio of 2.6 percent, generating $2,024 in revenue per 1,000 click-throughs, while Google AdWords paid listings produced a 2 percent conversion ratio, resulting in $1,013 per 1,000 click-throughs.
Overture or AdWords?
For those web site operators who have to choose between Overtures paid placement program and Google Adwords, due to budget constraints it is clear that Overture currently gives you more bang for the buck.
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