Comparing Paid Placement Programs

If you’ve ever struggled to get your website to appear on page one of the search engine results, then you know the effort can be expensive and time consuming. Pay for performance programs are a way for you to make an end run on the search engine placement game. If you are willing pay a fee every time someone clicks on the link to your site, then you can push your site’s listing right up to the top of page one. This week we’ll compare the two most popular programs, Google’s AdWords and Overture’s Pay For Performance Search, to see how they stack up.

Google AdWords is the best known pay for performance program. The Google program has several strong points in its favor. One of the key advantages is the potential for traffic generation. Sites who join the AdWords program appear on not only the Google site, but are also syndicated to AOL, Ask Jeeves, Netscape, Lycos, Hotbot, and Teoma. This is tremendous reach.

In comparison, the Overture program displays its results on the Overture site, as well as on Yahoo! (or they will very soon, as Yahoo! has dropped Google in favor of Overture), MSN, AltaVista, CNN, All The Web, and InfoSpace. Not too shabby. Expect the reach of the Overture program to expand as it will benefit from Yahoo!’s recent acquisition spree.

One of the factors that clearly favors AdWords is the ease of use. You can set up a sample program and assess costs easily, without having to give up personal information or go through a lengthy setup process. Overture, unfortunately, forces you to go quite a bit of effort before you can determine the exact cost of a particular ad. The flexibility of the AdWords program makes it not only a successful sales tool for Google, but also a good business intelligence tool for those of use who want to assess the relative costs and benefits of a proposed marketing campaign.

The ease of use issue doesn’t stop with the ability to preview campaigns. Ad setup is relatively easier on Google. The interface design of the Google control panel is more usable. Once again Google gets it right: for the vast majority of users, simpler is better.

Control over your advertising budget is one of the big issues in paid for performance programs. On Overture, you have three different options for setting up your account: an Open program, which simply bills through the charges to your credit card every month without restriction on amount; a Limited option, whereby you can cap your monthly expenditure; and a Pre-paid program which allows you to pay in advance and your ad runs until your allocation of funds are exhausted. This last option is unique to Overture and will not doubt appeal to some users.

Google provides a slightly different approach to payments, with the primary difference being that you can set daily spend limits (as opposed to Overture’s monthly limit formula). This is an interesting and desirable approach as it lets you assure that your ad will last a particular period of time without exceeding your budget.

The Overture program is more expensive to setup. They require a US $ 50 set up fee and also impose a US$ 20 monthly minimum on all accounts. There is no set up fee or monthly minimum on Google.

Managing multiple campaigns in multiple markets is more difficult on Overture. Different branches of the Overture family (say, Overture Korea) have different payment and account policies than the main Overture site. Google gives you one point of contact for all your campaigns, with one consistent pricing policy. If you wish to run global campaigns in native languages, Google is clearly superior on this point as Overture complicates your billing and incurs much more management overhead.

A final point worth mentioning is the turn-around times of these two competitors and the related editorial policies. Google lets you get up and running immediately. You simply go to Google, set up your account, and create your ads and you are off and running. The ads are live almost immediately. Editorial oversight is an afterthought. In contrast, Overture imposes a three to five day turnaround time on ads, with their editorial review occurring before the ads are allowed to go live.

So which program is right for you? While Google is certainly easier to deal with and provides more control, I have to say that at this point in Internet marketing, you need to be on both services if you are serious about reaching your audiences. If you go with Google only, you are turning your back on the not insignificant audiences attached to Yahoo! and MSN. So, while it may require an increase in effort and complexity, the maximum benefit is to be found by balancing your campaign across these two very similar competitive programs.

written by: Ric Shreves,
http://www.waterandstone.com