Overture to charge 10p minimum

[Dom99]

I see Overture are doubling the price of their minimum cost per click in the UK.

As it is we pay more than state siders and now theyre just doubling it!

As my subscriptions are at £5 per time I cant afford to pay more than this.

Not that I should be so worried as Google presents 90% of my traffic anyway!

[cline]

I got that notice from them too. They're not even grandfathering old bids.

IMHO, very stupid of them. 10p goes over one of my clients' max bid levels, so I'll be shutting down the program for them. I have another client it will affect, but their max bid level is far higher. All the real traffic comes in on a few competitively bid terms. Overture won't make much extra off of this client.

Overture is pretty stupid about this. They should just charge a listing fee, whereby one pays a set-up fee of £X for each term listed, then let the bidding be whatever. This would cover the costs of having editors review each listing, while making it economical for advertisers to advertise on high-volume, low-value terms. They're so greedy they're leaving money on the table by poorly serving their customers.

[Dom99]

I completely agree.

I remeber when Google started their adwords everyone comlained it wasnt the same as Overture and Espottings methods.

Well I guess now everyone actually thinks its far superior once you understand how to use it.

No wonder Google is THE SE to use. They really think first!!!

[searchrank]

What is really idiotic about this sudden move by Overture to double the minimum bid is that their partner base among the top engines has declined. They used to have AOL, Netscape and Teoma and now competitor Google has these. Then they lost All The Web to competitor Sprinks. Therefore they double the budget of people paying $.05 a listing and have less partners to spread listings to. This one is going to bite them in the butt I feel. Very stupid decision that was obviously birthed by greed. I will begin to phase out my Overture advertising in place of Goolge.

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums David! :hi:

I could not agree with the sentiments in this any more. Good thoughts!

Overture IS greed motivated. It's been very obvious for awhile now. It's one thing for a company to want to make a profit. It's quite another thing about "how" they go about achieving it.

[Dom99]

I think youre wrong about AOL though :( they still seem to have them just type Forces Reunited into aol and mouseover the top listing, youll see its fed by Overture.

Shame cause if it wasnt they would only have MSN that mattered.

[windybanks]

looks like they've done it in US: (that was quick!)

News :

NEW MINIMUM BID:

Please note that the minimum bid for an Overture listing is now $0.10. This minimum bid applies to new listings and bid changes only; existing listings with bids between $0.05 and $0.09 will be “grandfathered” and allowed to remain the same for the foreseeable future. You may update titles, descriptions and URLs for these listings without changing your bid; however, if you choose to make any bid changes to these listings, you must bid at least $0.10 going forward.

[Dom99]

except in the UK our bids will not be grandfathered, within 6 weeks ALL bids must be 10p or over which is about $0.16!!!!!!!!!

[windybanks]

wonder why the difference in the UK? were your $0.01 bids grandfathered?

doesn't make much difference with most of my clients as they are in competitive markets and bids are generally $0.20 - $0.50. But for the others i will sure take advantage of the grandfathering.

[cline]

It's an economically dumb move. Lots of search phrases aren't worth 10 cents or 10p a click, even though the total volumes may be huge. Overture is working themselves out of that market.

It's very stupid. Their cost infrastructure has to pay for a bunch of editors. If they needed to increase price, they should have charged a listing fee for each new search phrase approved.

[JuniorHarris]

A fool and his money easily part!~ ;)

[searchenginemarketing4u]

Overture UK's minimum was always £0.05 before.

At least I managed to reduce some US bids to below $0.10 before Friday so that I could get them grandfathered for a period of time (unknown!)