The Challenges of Pay-For-Placement
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| Ok, with so many advantages to PFP advertising, you're ready to sign up and watch your listings go live this weekend , right? Yes, there are a lot of benefits for first-time search engine advertisers and experienced marketers. But with this instant traffic delivery system and the increase in advertisers using it, there are several ways to quickly bleed time and money. Understand what challenges await you and get ready to respond to obstacles. The Battle with Editors for Ad ApprovalBecause it's painless for companies to bid for thousands of premium keyword positions , there's the potential of companies bidding on nonrelevant terms. What happens if web users see what they consider to be junk results on a PFP engine, or one of their partner sites? You got it; they'll stop using that search engine. Therefore, as a way of maintaining the integrity of their search results, PFP editors are tough when it comes to approving sponsors' ad listings. Editors reject ad listing submissions that will frustrate their users: those containing broken destination URLs, for instance. Rejection is certainly frustrating for advertisers. One of my client's listings was declined for the keyword "white sewing machine" because the word "white" wasn't on the landing page copy. Um, the sewing machine in the photo was white. There were no other color options on the order form either. Needless to say, I was irked that I had to resubmit the listing. Due to that experience, I began verifying that keywords were in the landing page copy, not just as an obvious match to images on the page. Overture shared that up to 30% of listings submitted to them are rejected, which means a lot of advertisers are unhappily modifying and resubmitting listings. Hopefully, by following each search engine's editorial guidelines, you'll avoid this fate. (Revisit the submission guidelines in Chapter 4, "Copywriting Tips to Improve Your Click-Through Rate.") Only Top Spots Win TrafficUnlike Fixed Placement, with PFP you can bid for a #1 position, but you won't be king of the keyword for long. Every hour competitors could outbid you for the highest position. Once your listing is knocked below a Top 5 or Top 10 position, you're generally no longer getting visibility on a majority of Pay-For-Placement partner sites. A significant amount of PFP traffic comes from their partners . Therefore, it's paramount to maintain a top position to continue a strong flow of traffic to your site. Let's review the "pet meds" example again by looking at FindWhat.com's partner sites running this keyword search. Figures 7.6 and 7.7 show the part of the search results page on Excite and Dogpile where FindWhat.com's advertisers are displayed. It's interesting to see how Excite integrates the results from the PFP engines on their page, while Dogpile sorts the results by PFP engine. You may not always easily identify which search engine is providing the results, as you can in these examples, but look for a "Sponsored Listing" type of header and you'll know that they are paid listings. Figure 7.6. Excite integrates FindWhat.com's sponsored listings among results from other search engines, including Overture, Inktomi, Ask Jeeves, Google, and Sprinks. Figure 7.7. Dogpile sorts results by Pay-For-Placement search engine. Be Hot or Be DroppedSearch engine representatives want their technology to provide relevant results for a better user experience. They also want to maximize revenue from their advertisers. As a way of serving both objectives, some PFP engines now contain a click popularity feature that penalizes advertisers who are receiving a low click-through rate; unpopular listings are deleted. Unfortunately, this hurts advertisers whose conversion rates make their PFP campaign profitable, but because their click-through rates fall below the acceptable minimums, those listings are dropped. If this happens, you should receive a notice via email with the listings that will be yanked. Modify them ASAP in an attempt to boost your click rate, or they'll be deleted. The Threat of Increased CompetitionSearch engine advertising is finally receiving publicity in mainstream media for being one of the most effective marketing methods available today. Tools now exist to make search engine advertising easier to monitor. Unfortunately, with greater awareness of this hot topic, competition on the Pay-For-Placement field is skyrocketing. It's harder to find keywords without advertisers, which means it's challenging to land minimum $.01, $.05, or $.10 per-click bids. Companies also are either using management tools or outsourcing these efforts to search engine marketing professionals. Battles over keywords continue to escalate, and newer competitors are outfitted with sophisticated weapons for the fight. Arm yourself with the research, management, and tracking tools described in this book to not simply beat your competitors, but guarantee that you're refining your campaigns based on ROI goals and not on maintaining a #1 position. Bid Gaps Drain Extra ProfitsTo climb into a higher position with Pay-For-Placement engines, you must increase your per-click bid. For a penny over what a competitor is paying, your listing will jump above his. Bids are generally updated hourly, which means the lineup of advertisers is in a constant state of flux. Advertisers not only add keywords and raise their bids, but also delete keywords and lower bids. Suddenly, you're in a #1 spot paying $2 per click while advertiser #2 is paying only $.50 per click. This difference is known as a bid gap . To continue being #1 you'd only need to pay $.51 per click. Even though a few pennies come between you and the next advertiser, this amount adds up quickly and drains the profits on your campaigns. Spend the bare minimum to maintain your desired position. Fortunately, tools exist to solve this time-consuming problem. As previously mentioned, Did-it.com and GO TOAST offer services that include bid gap management. There are also inexpensive bidding tools that won't manage your campaigns based on return on investment targets, but will maintain your bids and positions for you, in addition to adjusting bid gaps. A good list of vendors to consider are those already approved by Overture for the North American marketplace , which at the time of this writing included:
A few PFP search engines, including Overture, have integrated an automated bid gap adjustment feature. Whew ‚ you won't have to worry about wasting money because all bids are reduced to the lowest possible bid. That's a relief ‚ almost. You should know one important feature about Overture's Max Bid, or you could be the victim of a "punish your competitor" attack. (I've heard about this being done and it's not pretty.) On Overture, advertisers set the maximum bid they're willing to pay for a keyword. The Auto Bid feature reduces each advertiser's bid to one penny above the bid beneath him, which becomes the actual fee paid by the advertisers. For example, if the #1 advertiser sets his max bid at $1 and the next highest bid is $.20, then #1 will actually pay $.21 per click. This works out well unless the #2 advertiser forces the #1 advertiser to pay his max bid. In this same scenario, if advertiser #2 bids $.99, then the #1 advertiser will pay $1 because that's a penny above #2's bid. The tables below illustrate these two possibilities (the lowest-positioned bidder pays $.10 because that is Overture's minimum bid; this scenario assumes there are only three advertisers).
According to an Overture representative, this isn't a common problem for their advertisers. Even with that reassurance, the moral of this story is: Don't set a maximum bid that you don't really want to pay. Constant Monitoring Is RequiredOf course, it's important to monitor the results of any search engine advertising campaign. But with Fixed Placement you'll know your estimated cost because you've negotiated the media buy. Although over-delivery is infrequent with Fixed Placement, if it does happen it can be a free bonus because your cost would exceed the commitment you approved in the contract (ask your media rep about this to be sure). With Pay-For-Placement, you can estimate the number of clicks to your site, but your actual delivered traffic could be substantially higher than you had expected. When you set up a campaign on PFP engines, you might not want to choose the "unlimited traffic" payment option, to avoid surprise surges. Approve a specified amount and you'll receive an email notification when your account runs low and needs a refill. Click fraud is a quiet yet expensive problem on Pay-For-Placement search engines. Essentially, this is junk traffic for which you're being charged. Click fraud is caused by your competitors or by unethical behavior by a few distribution partners of PFP engines. Search engines do have click fraud protection mechanisms in place, but not all of it is caught, and it's costing a few companies significant dollars. We'll look more at how to protect your campaigns from click fraud in Part VI, "Protecting Your Profits." Just be aware that click fraud is another issue that demands your attention if you're running decent- sized PFP campaigns. No Control Over Search Distribution PartnersVery few search engines are "pure." They don't offer entire search results from only their own database of web site links (Google and Teoma do, however). Not only do search engines tap into each other's databases for web site links, but when their relationships change they use other vendors as their sources. Furthermore, search engines redesign their sites so the location and content of the ad listings always shift. Subsequently, marketers need to engage in optimization and advertising efforts, as well as a myriad of advertising programs. When changes in partnerships occur, these impact Pay-For-Placement advertisers the most because the core benefit of PFP engines rests in their distribution partner network. Suddenly, your traffic levels could spike, or die off. The partnerships influence the quality of traffic, too. To remain abreast of the latest dance partners in the PFP space, subscribe to online newsletters such as those recommended in the Resources section of this book. |
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EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 155