Is Keyword Purchasing, just affordable spam?

[greeneagle]

Is Keyword purchasing just affordable and acceptable spam? How about pay per click?, Is that not just a form of affordable spam?, or is it true advertisement? Where should we draw the lines between spam and legit advertisement?

Sound off, I need to know as a marketing professional!
Ken

[rlrouse]

Keyword purchasing is advertising, and it's the whole premise behind pay-per-click search engines.

[simonm]

I tried keyword purchasing about two years ago. It resulted in ZERO additional site visitors. A waste of money and not so much spam but scam.

[greeneagle]

What I am really wanting to know, is if purchased ads like those in several search engines and Adwords just affect ads or do they actually figure into search results? If the figure into search results, does that not bridge the spam - GAP?
Ken

[simonm]

I would differentiate between keyword purchasing and adverts either of the adword or banner variety.
My understanding of keyword purchasing is where, when your purchased keywords are used, the user sees those key terms at the top of the search results. When MSN tried this, they placed the keywords as a title with no descriptive text. Thus the keywords were largely out of the context of the search listing and the user didn't have a hint as to the relevance of the site apart from its search engine placement.
I have also tried webfinder which is marginally effective and a ppc.
I use adwords and find them effective.

[ron sheldrick]

Any form of sponsorship, pay-per-click or anything else you have to pay portals for isn't really affordable.
When you enter search engines you get 5 or 6 sponsored links at the top of each page and they because the guys that have paid get listed there( page 1) on a rota basis ...means today page one tomorrow page 99.
It's self defeating.
Far better to pay a decent SEO consultant or company to tune your site and then you get top 30 listings
Consisitently...as long as you have them tune on a regular basis ( money well spent)

[bfranson@ebizmark.com]

I think that disqualifying the potentially highly effective and highly pofitable products of PPC is a mistake. If one uses the right tools and services these programs can have significant pay-out and should not be overlooked. I have seen it happen again and again. One needs to employ the use of two key services. Overture.com and Wordtracker.com. First use wordtracker to identify keywords related to your site that are searched frequently. You do not want to search for terms that people do not look for. You then proceed to compare high search frequencies from Wordtracker.com to those which have low bidding prices at Overture (PPC service). Overture embeds in a high number of search engines. Also bid for at least the top 3 as turnover rate decreases significantly beyond these initial three. You will only have to pay for persons who click through and reach your page.

(MOD edit: Two non-essential comments deleted - please try to state your opinions in a way which allows room for other opinions. Let's keep this thread courteous.)

[dmcgill]

The old way to advertise on the net or anywhere else was to do something to get a persons attention. We have all seen the silly ads on TV and wondered what in the world that had to do with the product of service it was promoting but when you went to the store, guess what caught your eye. Come on, what does Golden Arches bring to mind and lately, "Zoom zoom" or "can you hear me now?"
Keyword advertising used correctly is fantastic but it does, in my opinion, have a strong potential to spam. If you are marketing widgets and you pay for the keyword beautiful models, you may get a ton of hits. Now on your ad, you could have a beautiful model holding or using your widget. But would it lead to a pile of sales, I rather think not. If you purchase the keyword widget though, only those who are looking for widgets would access the ad and your targeted buyer will see your site.
Thats my two cents.
dmcgill