Is PPC sucking lately or is it just me?

November 3rd, 2007, 10:03 pm Michael PPC

So recently I have launched two large budget campaigns for two very expensive search terms. One dealing with dating and another dealing with loans.

I setup across the 3 major PPC sites (adwords, yahoo search marketing & M$ adcenter) - With google I was able to setup the campaigns, import keywords and be ready to go in a matter of minutes. Adcenter took a lot longer, due to the fact I feel the programming over there is horrible. I would rather see basic HTML then all the lame attempts of a web 2.0 feel - remember a flashy looking dashboard does not increase productivity when half the time is spent with annoying loading graphics. The same goes for yahoo, it takes more time to load the ajax boxes then it does to make the small changes I want. I dreaded the time it took me to add separate URLs for each of the terms I was targeting. 20 terms took me about 25 minutes to complete. I really hope I am doing something wrong and I am not that used to the new search marketing account vs. the old overture layout - if not this is something that needs to be addressed.

So I launched all 3 campaigns…
…well I thought I did.

It turns out I had an exclamation point in my listing title for adcenter, this made the entire campaign freeze until it was addressed. When it was addressed still none of my adds showed up on adcenter - on the phone with customer service I went. Nice guy - but didn’t know shit. He said to give it another hour and they should be running, he didn’t see anything wrong with the account and it should be back up shortly. It did come up, the following morning. When I went to change some bids, it began the whole cycle again. I didn’t have the mindset to call on Friday so I am planning on dealing with them on Monday before I head over to Ad Tech.

Overture….err.. Search Marketing went off fine. I had received 6 clicks which 3 had converted into leads, So I was in the green. Then I got an email that there was an issue with the credit card that I was using. The address didn’t match & I had to call them asap - my account was froze until then. So I called, they verified the credit card address with the company, but said the charges were still on hold until I spoke with the credit card company and told them to allow the charges. Great.

Adwords oh adwords.

One of the sites I am working with has a very high CPC, which makes me nervous. The average is between $6.00 & $8.00 a click, with a lead only generating $10.00 - this can be very risky. With the other two guys out of commission until Monday, when I am back in my office, Adwords was my only hope of making some kick ass conversions over the weekend. Well it appears adwords is broken so I am shit out of luck there. I have yet to really see any of my ads on google at all. I have been playing around with making a bunch of different ads trying to bid stuff up here - waiting an hour (or two) and still nothing. I have even bid up some words to high amounts but still nothing. Yet my PPC campaign for my lower CPC is showing fine. Conversions are sucking, but its showing fine - because I have not touched them and they are for broad searches. With my higher CPC I am running it direct and phrase matching only. A broad match is to risky in this situation. Is it possible that we are in a bit of a google dance for adwords?

I had a great run for the 30 minutes I was up on Yahoo, crap so far on adwords and who knows what the hell is up with adcenter - maybe its just not my week! Maybe launching a campaign this close to the weekend where conversions normally suck anyway is just bad luck - kind of like a ship leaving on a Friday.

Anyway Monday is Ad tech - which should be fun. Hopefully next week will be better.

..send this around..