If you’ve ever struggled to get your website to appear on page one of
search engine results, then you know effort can be expensive and time consuming. Pay for performance programs are a way for you to make an end run on search engine placement game. If you are willing pay a fee every time someone clicks on link to your site, then you can push your site’s listing right up to top of page one. This week we’ll compare two most popular programs, Google’s AdWords and Overture’s Pay For Performance Search, to see how they stack up.Google AdWords is best known pay for performance program. The Google program has several strong points in its favor. One of key advantages is potential for traffic generation. Sites who join AdWords program appear on not only Google site, but are also syndicated to AOL, Ask Jeeves, Netscape, Lycos, Hotbot, and Teoma. This is tremendous reach.
In comparison, Overture program displays its results on Overture site, as well as on Yahoo! (or they will very soon, as Yahoo! has dropped Google in favor of Overture), MSN, AltaVista, CNN, All The Web, and InfoSpace. Not too shabby. Expect reach of Overture program to expand as it will benefit from Yahoo!’s recent acquisition spree.
One of factors that clearly favors AdWords is ease of use. You can set up a sample program and assess costs easily, without having to give up personal information or go through a lengthy setup process. Overture, unfortunately, forces you to go quite a bit of effort before you can determine exact cost of a particular ad. The flexibility of AdWords program makes it not only a successful sales tool for Google, but also a good business intelligence tool for those of use who want to assess relative costs and benefits of a proposed marketing campaign.
The ease of use issue doesn’t stop with ability to preview campaigns. Ad setup is relatively easier on Google. The interface design of Google control panel is more usable. Once again Google gets it right: for vast majority of users, simpler is better.
Control over your advertising budget is one of big issues in paid for performance programs. On Overture, you have three different options for setting up your account: an Open program, which simply bills through charges to your credit card every month without restriction on amount; a Limited option, whereby you can cap your monthly expenditure; and a Pre-paid program which allows you to pay in advance and your ad runs until your allocation of funds are exhausted. This last option is unique to Overture and will not doubt appeal to some users.
