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...

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Garrett French
Editor, WebProNews.com
http://www.WebProNews.com

Using both Google Adwords and Overture for my clients, I am more in favor of Overture. Although Google does have tremendous reach, Overture is much easier to use.

The billing is handled a lot nicer. With Google, you never really know when you will be billed and you are unsure exactly what you will be charged on your credit card. Overture allows you 3 different billing options to fit your needs. My favorite is adding funds at your leasure. This works great when I need to wait for my clients to pay me.

In Overture your ad is always showing up unless your funds run out or you make your ad "offline", With Google, I have had numerous complaints about my clients ads not showing up when they type in the specific keywords that they requested. How do you explain to your client that for every 15 times that keyword is typed in, your ad will show up, unless you are willing to pay more money?

Overture easily allows you to customize your ads specifically for each keyword. Google makes it a bit more complicated of a process to customize each ad on a per keyword basis.

All-in-all I prefer Overture, although I still use Google only because of its reach.

Aren't Google and the big "O" one and the same? The money ends up in the same pot does it not?
So.. in a sense, he was right when he said they both have the broadest coverage.
dmcgill

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D McGill
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