Comparisons In PPC Advertising Programs

When “shopping” for a pay per click network, an advertiser should be aware of what is popular, what companies aren’t, and which incorporate efficiency, speed, and a friendly, supportive environment for their advertisers, both experienced and new to the PPC advertising market. Although it is easy to choose a program based on it’s popularity, it’s also easy to choose a program just because it’s not. Certain types of PPC advertising networks are unpopular for good reasons, and others are simply too new to have enough advertisers and clients to correctly fill a user’s needs. It is always in the best interest of an advertiser to find a happy medium between the two extremes. Also, not to forget, that in every venture, there will be the pro’s and cons that people find in everyday life. Nothing is perfect, but with a lot of research, and a great attitude, an advertiser can find the next best thing.

Ask.com

Ask.com is formerly known as Ask Jeeves, and is a part of IAC Search & Media, which is in turn, part of the larger corporation, IAC/InterActive Corp. Their headquarters are in Oakland, California. Ask.com has great reviews, on most websites, dedicated to giving full ratings and factual advice on the latest, greatest, and heinous PPC advertisers out there,  and the popularity of Ask grew quite a bit last year, and is still very popular this year; it is in fact, listed in the top ten PPC search engines on many sites. They approach the keyword bidding, and auction process a bit differently, and use something called “eCPM ranking,” which is a simple formula, though most find it confusing. eCPM is simply the cost per click, multiplied by the clickthrough rate; the advertiser’s ad will be ranked, relative to what amount other bidders are bidding on the same keywords. There is what is called, a “reserve price,”  which is the minimum cost per click needed to guarantee an advertiser’s keyword will be ranked in first position, on the top of sponsored listings, shown in the search results. The reserve price is based on market intelligence, so claims Ask.com, and the CPC’s that are already there.

Ask.com PPC advertising program has some great features and benefits, but amongst those are the fact that as early as June 2005 it was already overlapping in users of only just over 20% with and Yahoo, and Google, which basically means that they’re providing original, and a great unique search engine for users. The terminology for the site is much the same as the other search engines out there, despite their different approach to bidding on keywords. Another great feature, provided by Ask.com is that the tool for bidding on keywords, allows the advertiser to view the top five competitors for the keyword the advertiser might be interested; that way, they can make note of any “bid wars” going on, and can steer clear of getting involved in that money losing process.

Although the pay per click advertising program offered by Ask.com is both popular, and efficient, users are slightly concerned over how their bidding on keywords process works. The auction model is simple, but many advertisers find it complex, and confusing, because it simply is not the formula that other programs use. The bid amount for most PPC advertising programs, is based on CPC, whereas the formula used on Ask, is CPC multiplied by CTR, instead of the conventional method. Also, the minimum bid price, is only five cents, that is true; but although the reserve price is great for some bidders, it can make things more difficult for others, if there is one placed on a keyword they were planning to use.

Microsoft AdCenter

Microsoft AdCenter is fairly new; it debuted only last year in May, for the United States, and were reportedly still experimenting on the functions and features available within the site, opening up new options slowly for advertisers, in late 2006. But last year, contextual advertising was still by invitation-only. Microsoft AdCenter refers to their ads as, “P4P” instead of PPC; they call them, “pay for performance” ads. Their PPC option is offered for the Live Search property, whose audience is identified mainly as  “[on average] 45 years old, skews female, married, and 45 percent have children. They also earn high incomes (Avg. HHI $76.1K), and are well-educated, professionals–with an additional 4 percent being full-time students.”

One the great benefits of using AdCenter is that potential advertisers can get access to a demographic, and information, on the millions of users that use MSN products, and services, or have registers for the MSN.net Passport account. The reason for this, is that if advertisers can see their potential audience, they’ll be much more confident in beginning a campaign with AdCenter, not only based on sheer amount of users with the passport; but users who actually buy products from Microsoft are also excellent for a new advertiser.

There are some negative aspects, as well, with Microsoft AdCenter, for instance, although this really isn’t so bad, that they do provide a Quicklaunch program, which is a tool for helping advertisers create their ads, and start their campaigns; however, the advertiser must spend at least $30 a day. That kind of feature, as nice as it is, however, is entirely too expensive for new advertisers on a budget, and is slightly unrealistic. Also, there is a tool to regulate and set how much an advertiser can spend in a month, there is no tool available, and no way to set a daily spend limit. Besides that, ads that have higher, or the highest click-through rates, may supplant other advertiser’s ads. However, these are reports made late in last year and may have been changed, simplified; also, new tools may have been added to their program is well. The best thing an advertiser can do is look around their site, and ask others who have used it, how the AdCenter program worked for them.

- Ads with a larger CTR can supplant existing ads.