Pay Per Click with Set Budget/Cost?

Ira_Weiss · #1 (**permalink**) 05-20-2006, 01:03 PM

I've been using Yahoo/Overture and Google Adwords ppc services and Yahoo continues to go over budget.

Customer service explained that this is because ppc is not calculated in real time. Great. So they tell me my only solution is to lower my bids. Great Twice.

I'm trying to search for a ppc service that I can actually set a budget they will stick to, or they have a set cost. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Ira Weiss

schmeetz · #2 (**permalink**) 05-22-2006, 04:06 PM

Hi Ira,

Why dont you lower your budget a bit?

Yahoo, Google and MSN are the only PPC companies i would do business with.

Ira_Weiss · #3 (**permalink**) 05-22-2006, 05:55 PM

if, as they say, clicks are not tabulated in real-time. My budget was set to $3 and it consistently gets slammed for over $10 per day. If too many clicks occur too fast I'm still hosed.

Thanks for the reply!

kjohnson5576 · #4 (**permalink**) 05-22-2006, 06:32 PM

I've all but given up on Yahoo PPC. I had some money sitting in the account and decided to pare down my keywords and try some new advertising copy that has been working very well at AdWords. Yahoo went way over budget ($40 per day budget, average $65-70 per day ad cost). Also, only one conversion.

I started checking into my web log stats to check out where traffic was coming from and most of the yahoo clicks came from pure advertising spam sites. I did not have content clicked on, just search. Yet the searches that were sent were from off the wall search engines like landing.domainsponsor.com, searchportal.information.com, which all take you to information.com, or as.starware.com/dp/search, dp.qsrch.com/apps/eps/eps.cgi, park3.ireit.com/index.asp, www.leatherjacketsdirectory.com, Plus a number of more sites.

I've never looked at any of these sites and I've never even heard of these sites, yet, each one of the sites sent at least 5 people or more to my website in about 3 days. Plus, despite the budget analyzer telling me I was good for about 5 days of search, I was charged 2 more times within 3 days of advertising on Overture services (That's $300 without a sale). Maybe it's just me, but I can't figure out how anyone makes money advertising with them. Adwords is tough enough to make a buck on, but this is out of the realm of reality.

I can't imagine a budget of just $3 per day, that would last about 10 minutes on Overture and less than two hours on Adwords during the day.

chrisJumbo · #5 (**permalink**) 05-22-2006, 06:40 PM

I've used both Yahoo and Google with budgets. As long as I have my bids right I've been okay. If I set them too high and the clicks come flowing in then the budget goes out the window. (Like accidently getting the #1 position).

I've found Yahoo to be much better when it comes to specializing the key words like "best cd rates" vs. "cd rates". Yahoo will actually put the results for "best cd rates" above "cd rates" even if the bidding on "cd rates" is higher. Google does not work this way. This saves us considerable $.

NameCritic · #6 (**permalink**) 05-22-2006, 11:28 PM

google never went over my set budget.

kevsta · #7 (**permalink**) 05-22-2006, 11:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kjohnson5576

I can't imagine a budget of just $3 per day, that would last about 10 minutes on Overture and less than two hours on Adwords during the day.

I operate on comparatively very small budgets compared to you guys on both Google and Yahoo.

£1 ish per day on Yahoo and £3 per day on Google. Its a relatively niche business admittedly but I got an email from yahoo saying I was halfway thro the month & hadnt hit half of their minimum spend yet, hence I should add more keywords or widen the net a bit because they would charge me the minimum (£20 per month) whether I spend it or not. Google on the otherhand sometimes hits the daily budget and stops the impressions by early evening.

im pretty happy with the spend control on both tbh, i think they both work pretty well for directing accurate search-relevant traffic to the site.

free · #8 (**permalink**) 05-23-2006, 07:18 AM

I'm fortunate to have been working for a company where we effectively spend as much as is available for the keywords that generate return for us so I can't help with "daily" budgetry issues per se.

My point is that I have found Yahoo SM second only to Google in terms of conversion and it seems disingenuous to me to stop using it because of this problem - If you seek another PPC engine you're effictively ruling out the second biggest PPC network.

I have 2 suggestions:
1) Learn to work with Yahoo and don't cut your nose off to spite your face - cut your budget further, demand a refund, whatever... (I am only too aware of how rubbish they are and the inadequecies of thier poxy systems - depite spending c. £2k a month with them I still get treated like ****). I know it's rubbish but this is what it's like with Yahoo.

2)Perhaps put this money into Google instead? If you're not buying all the clicks that are available anyway (and I suspect you're not or you wouldn't be going over budget) and your budget is limited then why not use the service that works for you and increase your spend there? When you've maxed out on Google, then reassess the alternatives...

Finally opt out of content advertising on both without delay.

ditto · #9 (**permalink**) 05-23-2006, 09:08 AM

Google will extrapolate your daily budget to produce a monthly budget figure. Which you will not exceed.

eg $1 a day daily budget x 30 days in the month = $300 your monthly budget.

Some days you may go over and hit $2, other days it may be 50c, but over the month you will not exceed your monthly budget.

So in effect you should consider your monthly spend when you set your daily budget.

hth,

kjohnson5576 · #10 (**permalink**) 05-24-2006, 08:44 PM

Free---read the most recent post http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=63887
about Yahoo Search. Interesting, Very Interesting.

With the exception of a few folks here at WPW, I've never talked to anyone who had great luck with Overture. Most say it's like throwing money out the window. The funny thing is, if it's so bad for me, I can't understand why the top placements are always the same as the top placements in Adwords. I suspect they have BIG money going into ads and better methods of knowing where the clicks and conversions come from and when they complain, Yahoo and Google both listen, rather than lose a $10K/month plus account.

corduroy090 · #11 (**permalink**) 05-24-2006, 11:15 PM

Why don't you just stop using Yahoo...and increase your Google budget?

free · #12 (**permalink**) 05-25-2006, 06:45 AM

Quote:

Free---read the most recent post http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=63887
about Yahoo Search. Interesting, Very Interesting.

I'm not suprised by that. But as I said, in my experience Yahoo SM is often just as effective as Google adwords. I can only speak from my experience.

My top client spends about £3k with then a month and will see a return of about 500% on average. Some keywords have returned 3000%. Pretty close to what we will see on Google adwords. The reason I think it works is because Yahoo the search engine is actually quite good and popular! Ditto MSN where the ads are also carried.

I understand what you're saying but if you exclude Yahoo SM you're exclusing a massive share of search engine traffic - what is Yahoo and MSN's combined market share of SE traffic? Even when MSN PPC is up and running Yahoo has to be at least worth a look.

Low quality content websites are not just a Yahoo problem are they? In my experience the problem is worse on Google.

The way to handle this issue is to:
1) Moan frequently to Google and Yahoo. Yea I know they don't seem to care...
2) Opt-out of content advertising!
3) Measure ROI on very finite keyword level.

If it's still not working then obviously stop it.

kjohnson5576 - maybe you could benefit from some very reasonably priced consultancy? :-) See below. Only joking. Interesting to hear your experience.