rbateman
07-10-2004, 15:14/03:14PM
Here is a note I sent to Google re their Adwords service when I discontinued it. You may find it relevant to your work.
Dear Google Adwords:
The reason I discontinued was that it seems your service only works for large budgets. There was no way I could keep my keywords from getting off-lined by your system without spending what are for me and my company astronomical amounts.
Interestingly, your system seemed to penalize the only keywords I was getting hits on. The more hits I got on a keyword, the more likely it was that your system would say it was underperforming and off-line it! This was extremely frustrating.
I experimented with two different account IDs and six different URLs. I did this for three months. To be fair, I did the same experiment at Overture. Both of you operate pretty much the same in terms of off-lining keywords and not being an affordable option for small business owners.
I wanted to spend no more than $500.00 per month between you and Overture. That is a large amount for my company to spend on Web advertising (as it is for most small businesses) as it represents just a portion of our monthly media buy. It became clear that we were way out of our league.
I would estimate that a monthly budget of less than $5,000 is a non-starter for your services. Let me note that prior to testing your services I read Catherine Seda’s book "Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales". Excellent though it is, it does not prepare one for the reality of your systems dynamic decisions.
I must be honest to say that my decision to discontinue was also based on the fact that after three months we definitely had more traffic, but were not seeing any ROI in the way of more sales.
Dear Google Adwords:
The reason I discontinued was that it seems your service only works for large budgets. There was no way I could keep my keywords from getting off-lined by your system without spending what are for me and my company astronomical amounts.
Interestingly, your system seemed to penalize the only keywords I was getting hits on. The more hits I got on a keyword, the more likely it was that your system would say it was underperforming and off-line it! This was extremely frustrating.
I experimented with two different account IDs and six different URLs. I did this for three months. To be fair, I did the same experiment at Overture. Both of you operate pretty much the same in terms of off-lining keywords and not being an affordable option for small business owners.
I wanted to spend no more than $500.00 per month between you and Overture. That is a large amount for my company to spend on Web advertising (as it is for most small businesses) as it represents just a portion of our monthly media buy. It became clear that we were way out of our league.
I would estimate that a monthly budget of less than $5,000 is a non-starter for your services. Let me note that prior to testing your services I read Catherine Seda’s book "Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales". Excellent though it is, it does not prepare one for the reality of your systems dynamic decisions.
I must be honest to say that my decision to discontinue was also based on the fact that after three months we definitely had more traffic, but were not seeing any ROI in the way of more sales.