Inktomi.
Dom,
I wasn't aware that Inktomi had any PPC plans at all. I pay to submit by individual url. It hasn't increased my rankings either. Like you, my rankings in the SERP's were already pretty high for my keyword phrases.
The biggest thing to keep in mind has already been mentioned. This coming spring, when Google makes it's IPO, Yahoo will drop their Google results. Yahoo results will then be a combination of their own combined with Inktomi results. Because of this, the investment in Inktomi becomes necessary. You don't have to sink a ton of money in, but you should pay to have your top-level url's included.
It's been proven over and over again that Inktomi has dropped (and will continue to drop) hundreds of thousands of pages that have not paid for inclusion into their directory.
As for Google AdWords. Why don't you stick to the portion of the program you started with and just uncheck the box that says to allow your listings to be shown on "search partner" sites? The program was great the way it was and then they muddied it up for some of us.
I find the ROI on AdWords to be fairly substantial. But the "search partner" sites did nothing at all to benefit my business. I let it run a week and then killed it, put it out of it's misery (:
Good luck to you Dom!
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