I have spent the last half hour talking with experts from Google and Overture about paid and organic advertisements. Richard Holden, Product Marketing Manager at
Google, gave a presentation that was basically just an advertisement for Google's Adwords. Afterwards, I took a few moments to talk to Richard, who works with the Google engineering teams to build Adwords tools, and I asked him a few basic questions.
Question: What resources would you suggest for people who are just getting started with Adwords campaigns?
Richard: Google is working on developing some resources. You can look at case studies on our site to get ideas. Danny Sullivan's work at
http://www.SearchEngineWatch.com is also excellent.
Q: Why use Adwords instead of Overture?
Richard: Because we have the broadest distribution. We are obsessed with relevancy and with keeping our paid ads and search results separate. We want it to be clear in users' minds that search and paid results are different.
Next, I interviewed speaker Dan Boberg, the Director of Strategic Alliances at
Overture. I asked him the same questions I'd asked Richard:
Q: What resources would you suggest for people who are just getting started with their campaigns?
Dan: There are case studies and best practises on Overture and SearchEngineWatch.com...
Q: Wouldn't it be best for Overture to have its own information?
Dan: We have Flash demos, case studies, tutorials, and more...
Q: Why use Overture instead of Adwords?
Dan: We have the broadest distribution on the web. With Overture's paid listings, you know you'll be listed at the top of the page, whereas with Adwords you don't know if you'll be at top because page rank comes into place, even with paid ads.
So both Google AND Overture have "the broadest distribution" on the internet? Hmmm...