Overture, now owned by Yahoo, (now called Yahoo! Search
Marketing Solutions) is considered the original pay per
click program. Its clients include some of the most
prestigious web sites and you'll have front page ads on all
of them. Overture's top of page placement and the fact that
you have lots of room for descriptive copy gives your ad
writer more power to generate click-throughs.
In contrast
to AdWords, which has remained stable, Overture has created
new programs to complement its main PPC service now called
Precision Match.
The Process
Similar to Google AdWords, you open an account with a
credit card and you can begin choosing keywords to bid on.
The account interface offers billing, transactions, listing
management and report production.
The Advantage
Overture's listings are seen in Yahoo, MSN, CNN, and
AltaVista and Infospace which means you might reach up to
80% of all Internet users. Your bids will have excellent
visibility to a high volume and variety of targeted
prospects. As a pay per click program, you can get free
brand awareness because of the volume of impressions.
Click-throughs depend upon the quality of your written offer
in the link so they must respond to the benefits customers
are seeking.
Overture's Account Interface
You can place exact bids and know right away what your
rank will be. If you want to appear in Yahoo top three
results, you must have one of the top three bid positions.
There is an auto bidding feature that allows Overture to
handle your bids automatically.
Overture offers a keyword search volume reporting tool
that helps find keywords that are actually used.
Jimtools.com offers a combined volume/price comparison
service that is very handy.
The Overture Pay Per Click Bid System and Guidelines
Human editors review your keywords and your site. You may
bid on a search term only if the web site has substantial
content that is clearly reflective of the search term.
What's new is Overture is now forcing clients to rewrite
their ads if they don't maintain a certain click thru rate.
The pages you want visitors directed to should be relevant
to the query phrase. In the listings manager, you type your
keyword phrase, title, and description along with the
specific page for visitors to be directed to. Overture makes
reports available for all of your approved phrases.
They may or may not allow you to bid on misspelled words.
They tend to reject three or four word phrases that don't
have sufficient search volume from searchers. Although they
don't have minimum click through requirements you could end
up spending money repeatedly on losing phrases. On the other
hand, some phrases may have a very low click through rate,
yet still produce some good sales. That's in contrast to
Google AdWords program where you may have some good sales
from a .04% click through rate, then watch your ad get
deleted because it does not meet the minimum click through
rate or what is referred to as CTR.
Overture will reject superlatives in your titles or
descriptions which tends to make the listing appear matter
of fact. There is no keyword exclusion option which means
your site will come up in irrelevant searches. Titles cannot
exceed 40 characters and descriptions cannot exceed 190
characters. Ads display on one line at Yahoo.
Overture PPC Tips
Fast Versatile Laptop
Computers - Don't work Without One Buy direct with no
interest financing. Our power laptops feature Intel®
Centrino™ Mobile Technology and powerful wireless antennas
for much better WiFi hotspot performance. It's the future
now.
www.laptops-usa.com
The advertisement above in Yahoo format, is loaded with
good sales cues. It leverages Intel's brand and talks about
wireless connectivity which is an important feature for many
business people who travel. It speaks in a straightforward
fashion in ways the buyer understands.
- Do not use a framed site,
since there is no direct url to the inside pages.
- Make bids on several
related phrases and your ad may appear more than once on
the same page.
- Ensure you have benefit
rich copy on your landing pages or your visitors may leave
as fast they arrived. Think about what you want them to do
when arriving.
Conclusion
Overture delivers good value for advertisers with top of
the page presence in Yahoo and many other good portal
placements.
Often, the best approach is to bid on the search phrases
you can't achieve in the free search listings. Overture is
easier to use than AdWords, so you can spend more time
finding the best bargain keyword phrases and then not have
to worry about ad performance restrictions.
