On the Internet right now there are over 500 smaller and less known PPC advertising programs operating, and serving advertisers quite well. Small business owners, and webmasters are appreciative of the smaller programs because they provide lower costs in advertising for their products, services, and websites, than the competition of the larger PPC advertising programs. Many of these smaller companies have great reviews from different sources throughout the Internet, are popular, have great usability, and excellent features, as well as many other factors. Small business owners, and others are encouraged to shop around for a pay per click program that is right for them. Instead of automatically choosing the most popular; because this can be more costly, and can eat up a budget faster than it can make them money, in the long run.
ePilot
EPilot debuted in 1999 as the search engine arm of Interchange Corporation of Laguna Hills, California and has since made quite an impression on the pay per click advertising market. EPilot is centered around a very user friendly interface that is easy to use and manage for its customers and advertisers. EPilot has also managed to gain partnerships from numerous other PPC advertising programs such as LookSmart, FindWhat, 24/7 Real Media, and Enhance Interactive. These companies it was able to expand in a very short time. And ePilot still may be expanding today, as more and more search engine channels emerge and are used by developing pay per click advertising programs. Back in 2003 it had already added numerous others such as Ask Jeeves, Business.com, and Search123, and was already able to completely remodel their website.
Some of the great things about ePilot is that for one it has a very professional look and atmosphere. The Interchange Corporation has invested a lot of funding in ePilot, when one considers the size of the company within the pay per click advertising market. But they have paid particular attention to how it enters the local search market with its new feature called, Local Direct search, which is also an advertising platform. Local Direct for sure is the advertiser that there will be an extremely quick search result, which is also great for the visitor making the search, and uses what is called “Keyword DNA.” This feature uses language in search results that the average user is familiar with and can identify with more easily. EPilot had a partnership with 290 different search engines and websites in 2006. This included large properties, and over 300,000 advertisers for a very large market reach; and this number may have grown by now. They also employ a very thorough screening of relevancy factors, when they’re taking on new ad campaigns.
The negative aspects of ePilot are that, for example, the Local Direct feature actually only includes local results from within the United States and excludes results from that of other countries. Also there is a minimum bid price of seven cents, but all things considered, this is still a very low price and should be taken into account. Also, although it can be used towards the advertiser’s ad campaign, all advertisers are required to make a $100 minimum credit card deposit for quick activation. This for some is still a very large commitment especially for small businesses, and advertisers that are on a budget. The support service for ePilot is also only open and available Monday through Friday during business hours, for anyone who may need live contact with an agent of ePilot for some kind of assistance.
AdOn Network
Founded in 1999 AdOn Network, was formally called myGeek, until it evolved into a shopping site. After it dropped the majority of the shopping model within nearly a year, it began spending the next two years helping other smaller websites, visitors, and general users with search engine optimization. MyGeek was based in Phoenix, Arizona before it changed its name to AdOn Network in August of 2006. The company changed its name because of the confusion, spanning between their company online, and the name of the popular computer repair company “Geeks.” There were a lot of benefits about the confusing circumstances around the name issue with their company, versus the other company, but there were more than enough negative aspects of the confusion, which were the cause of the name change. There are many advertising options with the AdOn Network pay per click program, such as “pop under” ads that makes keyword targeting with the cost per thousand or CPM view, that display the advertiser’s website and not just an ad. Another option is text-based display that is keyword targeted and also sold on a cost per view basis in a bid format. There are also search listing ads that fit into the basic pay per click model, and they start at only five cents per click.
There are also many other great aspects of AdOn Network, such as the Max Bid feature, which allows an advertiser to set the cost per click amount according to what they were willing to pay for keywords instead of a default balance that is set by the program. Afterwards the prices are adjusted by auto-settings down to the pricing that is set by other advertisers. This is a somewhat questionable feature, but although one advertiser might not have access to the keyword bids, they can always remove their ad from an affiliated network depending on whether or not they were satisfied with the traffic received to their ads on that partnering search engine or website. The advertisers using AdOn Network also have the option to block a maximum of eight websites from seeing their ads, and AdOn also protects against and detects click fraud. There is also what is called a day parting feature, which is offered in search listings to help the advertiser to select specific times of the day to run their target ads, for instance, a late-night browser depending if their product is aimed at that target. There is also very in depth reporting in order to help advertisers analyze their traffic in their cost per keyword. This helps ensure the advertisers that they’ll get the correct targeting, and also AdOn Advertiser Services representatives will assist advertisers in maintaining their campaign accounts to their best needs.
One of the less reputable factors about AdOn Network is that they do allow adult sites to campaign advertisements through their program. However these ads are monitored to ensure that they are only using adult oriented keywords, and are targeting the right audience. Another somewhat negative factor is that the advertiser cannot directly view the keyword bidding but as a productive alternative they are in courage to observe and estimate their own traffic to determine the factor in what to bid for keywords. Unfortunately AdOn network also has very limited geo-targeting. Keywords the deal with location can only be used by advertisers when their websites contain a decent amount of content that is relevant to the particular location.
December 22nd, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Could u provide the link?
December 22nd, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Another very informative article, was very interesting to read
December 23rd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Wow, thanks for telling us. I were looking for a PPC for reallly longgg!
February 26th, 2008 at 11:41 am
i try to become affiliate of Epilot but they did not pay me, even not paid by epilot. Whenever i reached payout, they delete me account.
March 25th, 2008 at 5:08 am
As a publisher it’s hard trying to find a good ppc network. Especially if you don’t use adsense.