Overture

OVERTURE DRIVES POWERFUL RESULTS

· Reach: With one advertising buy, you can reach up to 80% of all Internet users because you’ll be listed on some of the best search engines and portals on the Web.

· Targeted Leads: Customers who click on your search listings are pre-qualified, motivated and looking for what you have to offer.

· Bottom Line Results: You control the cost of acquiring new customers, and you pay only for targeted leads. This translates into a high return on your advertising investment.

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BidLab review of Overture.com:

(4 out of 5)

We like Overture. Not only do we like it, we use it. One way to get many visitors to your website is with high search engine ranking, which takes time, patience, skill, luck, mojo and most importantly, the ability to write great content. Next to this, the next best way is to pay for it, using a PPC search engine that lets you bid for clickthroughs that show text ads mingled with search results. This is the best way to insure a steady stream of visitors to your website, if the first option is too elusive or if you need immediate results.

Pros: If you are going to use a PPC search engine, then you must consider Overture. It is the most established PPC network, and the main competitor to Google AdWords. Overture's network includes search results pages on Yahoo, MSN, Info Space, Alta Vista, All The Web, Dogpile, and more.

Overture has a proven track record, and has an extremely easy to use interface with powerful tools like Keyword Match Types, a Search Term Suggestion Tool, and daily reporting of keyword placement, top bids, other bid amounts for keywords, etc. Our favorite feature is being able to see how many monthly searches are performed for keyword terms, which gives you an idea of a search phrases overall popularity.

Cons: Overture can be expensive if you are not smart about selecting your search terms. Keyword bids start at 10 cents, and with many affiliate programs paying out only a few cents to a nickel per lead, that means you'll have to be careful what links are on your landing pages. When using any PPC search network, you should try and link to your landing pages where you either sell items on your own behalf directly, or where your affiliate commissions are at least 10 or 20 dollars a pop.

We feel that Overture could make itself more accessible to the little guy in the market by returning to five cent minimums, as some keyword search terms often appear to go unbid when they occupy positions past the third or fourth spot. The naturally high competition for popular keywords would still keep their profits up, and would let more small business owners and individuals enter their PPC bidding marketplace, which would ultimately drive all bidding activity upward. A rising tide lifts all boats, and everyone benefits.

Note: Although a ten cent minimum may seem expensive compared to enhance.com's three cent minimum, Kanoodle's five cent minimum, and Go Click's one penny starting bid, are you really saving anything? You usually have to compete with people who have bid 10 cents or more at the cheaper sites for most popular terms any way, which means if you want to be in the PPC game, you are going to bid more than ten cents per search phrase.

Another area we feel could stand improving is Overture's approval time for ads, which usually takes from one to two days.

Also, although we like the editorial review process due to the quality assurance it provides the partners in it's network, it is very strict with what punctuation can appear in ad titles and descriptions, and what type of content can appear on your landing page. If a web page is not of the highest professional standards, or if its simply a series of affiliate ads for another company's website without any additional content provided, your keyword ad may be rejected.

Having covered the pros and cons, we sum up Overture this way- Although an ideal world would include a lower overture bid minimum, we feel their site is overall a stellar sales and advertising tool. It is a cornerstone of our ad placement on search engines, and it must be considered by any serious webmaster needing traffic.

Different types of Overture Match Types searches:

Let's say you are using Overture to sell your 200 pieces of Elvis Presley Rock Memorabilia. To get the most bang for your buck, and the highest link conversion (sales) possible, you will want to specify keyword phrases that are as close to an exact match as you can.

For instance, lets say you are selling your Elvis Presley Rhine Stone Belt or your Elvis Presley Hawaii Concert Ticket Stub. You would not want to simply choose generic terms like "Rhine Stone" or "Ticket Stub", because your ad will be seen either by people who are searching for something that is totally unrelated to Elvis- they won't click on your link, or worse, your ad will be clicked on and seen by people who aren't going to buy from you and will leave your page again in a few seconds. This costs you from a dime up to your max bid, each time your ad is clicked!

However, let's say you are using Overture, and you are not getting enough clickthroughs over a certain period of time... you may have set up your keywords to be a little too specific. In this case, you may want to use a simple and powerful tool called Match Types at Overture. Some possibilities for keyword terms can be seen in the chart below.

Match Type Variation Chart

Standard Match	Exact Plural Misspelled	Elvis Album Elvis Albums Evlis Ablum
Phrase Match	Used in an exact phrase	My favorite Elvis Album
Broad Match	Words in between Used in a different order or jumbled in sentence	Find Elvis first album Favorite album is by Elvis

Some people get Overture Phrase Match and Broad Match confused- Remember, Phrase Match finds the exact phrase, with no word variations allowed. Let's suppose you want to buy an auction book online.

When Phrase Match is used, your keyword phrase "auction book" must be entered by the search user in that exact manner: e.g. "Where can I buy an auction book"?

Remember, with Broad Match, a search can involve terms that use your keywords in a sentence, although perhaps slightly out of order. For example, a search for the term "auction book" might yield both the words used in a sentence like this:

"Find ebay auction for rare old book"
This is is an example of Broad Match, separated by words.

"Where can I find a book about running an auction"
This is is an example of Broad Match, with keywords used in a different order.

UPDATE: Overture recently made changes to its content match system! Overture bids are now no longer listed under the "Manage Products", but are broken up under two different tabbed pages now: Manage Precision Match, and Manage Content Match. You would set your bids for exact phrases under the first area: Manage Precision Match, and your bids for broad, content match are set under the Manage Content Match. The Precision Match area, lets you see bids for the top five keyword spots, while the Content Match area only shows the top three keyword bids.

NOTE: You still must select Content Match: ON in the Account Summary for Content Match to be applied to your searches. If you concerned about overspending or feel you are getting results that are too unfocused, you can also turn individual listings on or off in the Manage Content Match area.

Overture Keyword Placement Tips:

If you are too far down the list for a high demand keyword phrase like digital camera, say in the 35th spot, it is very unlikely you will get very many clicks, if any. How do you improve your rank? It's easy- just raise your bid. On sites like Overture, you can use the "Manage Products" section to see how many bids you are getting daily, and what the other bids in the top spots are. You want to try to be in the top five, and preferably in the top three.

First spot is obviously best, although sometimes we get great results with the third spot. Why? On Yahoo which is an Overture network partner, the top three sponsored listings on a search results page are displayed first- Since some people have trained themselves to weed these out, they skim through the list quickly to get to the unpaid results, and their eye lands on the third place ad, which is just above the regular search results. The same can be true of the sponsored ad in fourth place, which appears right below the regular search results section on Yahoo!

With a site like Overture.com, you can actually figure out which spot you will end up in, just by checking your bid in relation to the other current bid amounts. Your ad placement for that keyword phrase will stay in a particular spot until you change your bid, your account runs out of money, or until someone else bids higher and changes the order.

Also, Remember to check your bids occasionally- if you have bid a high amount for a search term, we recommend you log in and check daily at a minimum! We constantly see popular search terms like travel auction with a wide difference in bid amounts for first, second, and third place. If its 10 cents for third place, 11 cents for second place, and 45 cents for first place, you may want to lower that top bid to a more reasonable amount. If you are concerned someone will edge you out for the top spot, don't lower your bid to 12 cents, which just beats the other two. You could instead try 15 cents for awhile, which gives you some leeway.

Expert Tip - Sort your Ad Results with tracking URLS

You can use tracking URLS to determine how effective your keywords and ad campaigns are.

For instance, on this site, we review and explain Priceline.com, as it is actually a travel auction which relates to the online auction content of our site. We use PPC search engine bidding sites like Overture, Enhance, Adhearus, and other PPC sites to advertise our Priceline review. In order to keep all these different ads straight, we have to use tracking URLS so we can figure out how effective our ad dollar is being spent when we look at our daily, weekly and monthly stats.

Here's how we do it: When we want people to go to our Priceline Review Page, we actually use a landing page for Last Minute Travel, so the user knows immediately what we are talking about, and can have the option of proceeding to the Priceline review or visiting a similar advertiser if they just wanted to see a travel site without bidding.

So for that Last Minute Travel page, we might use a link on overture like:

http://www.auctionclinic.com/last_minute_travel.htm?overture_last_minute_travel_AD1

Take a look at the front part of the URL:

http://www.auctionclinic.com/last_minute_travel.htm

This is the actual link to the page on our site. Now look at the last part of the URL:

?overture_last_minute_travel_AD1

This would be the tracking URL, which lets us know this was an overture.com ad, that it was related to last minute travel, and that it was the first such ad in that group (AD1). Anything that goes after the question mark in the URL, will be ignored by the browser, enabling you to use this for your own informational purposes. You can of course, make up whatever tracking URL suits your needs- just remember to set tracking URLS "ON" in your accounts area on Overture, so their system can process your ads correctly. That's it. Try it for yourself when you advertise your web pages or auction listings- it's easy!

Also see PPC Search Engine Auctions Explained:

PPC Clickthrough Auctions - Bid for Website Traffic
PPC Search Auction Sites: Where to Bid
Chart: Bidding Intensity based on CPC (Cost Per Click)
How PPC Keyword Bidding works
Caution: Watch for Flying Bids