The changing landscape of PPC

[theRKF]

Indications are that MSN's PPC search volume and spend is now passing that of Yahoo! Search Marketing.

June 2008 was the first month when our MSN AdCenter spending exceeded our YSM spending. A milestone has been passed as YSM becomes our number 3. And it wasn't because MSN spending rose; it was because YSM spending sank. I almost feel sorry for this company when I look at how they have fallen. (But I'm not really sorry because I don't like spending money and because they brought it on themselves.) A few years ago, our AdWords and YSM spending were about equal. In June AdWords spending was 35 times YSM spending. Our YSM spending went from six digits per month back in 2005 to four digits in June 2008. Is the lower spending because we are getting fewer clicks, bidding on different keywords? No. It is almost all due to the collapse in price at YSM. The competitors in this industry realized the poor quality of traffic out of YSM and drove the bids down, down, down.

Quote from this article.

MSN has been recognized for a while as the best converter of the 3 major PPC players, though their traffic has been lowest. It will be interesting to see if the quality of traffic stays consistent as their search volume grows.

 

[jared]

Well their recent addition of the desktop client should help.

I got to try it in beta and it wasn't near as good as the Adwords editor but most definitely better than using their web interface.

Personally out of the big 3, Adcenter is the one I hate working with the most by a long shot.

 

[theRKF]

Are you trying to say that a Microsoft product is bloated and slow?

 

[jared]

haha, never!

*cough*vista*cough*

Although, to their credit I will say some of the best converting keywords I ever had were on Adcenter. My volume compared to Adwords or YSM is crap, but - I have no idea why - Adcenter converts the best usually.

I was rooting for the Y! and MS merger so I would only have two PPC interfaces to deal with
Usually, I just design the campaign in the Adwords Editor, export to .cvs, and then import it in the other two anyways...

 

[clay]

haha, never!

*cough*vista*cough*

Although, to their credit I will say some of the best converting keywords I ever had were on Adcenter. My volume compared to Adwords or YSM is crap, but - I have no idea why - Adcenter converts the best usually.

.

For those out there that know that Jared is "connected by birth" to McAdams, his work in PPC/Affiliate Marketing has not had anything to do with flowers....except the PPC for InLieuOfFlowers.info.