Overture effectiveness -- not

From: Rob Frankel <Rob_at_RobFrankel.com>
Date: Fri 01 Mar 2002 17:18:31 -0600

At 9:35 AM -0600 2/28/02, Jim Novo wrote:
>I've done considerable testing with Overture
>and Google AdWords, comparing visitor quality from
>these sources to visitors coming from "natural
>search", by engine by keyword.

A little while back, I promised I would share some data
on the http://www.PillowMail.com project, which we're
marketing with no budget, just brand strategy.

On the way, we used GoTo/Overture for two months, because
a test partner insisted that was the only way to get real
visitors/traffic. Here is a sampling of those numbers for
the same sampled group of advertisers, running identical
creative over the same amount of time, first using
Overture and then not using them:

These are the numbers WITH Overture, just brand strategy:

Imp. Clicks CTR

637 50 7.85%
650 28 4.31%
345 18 5.22%
1356 32 2.36%
1333 62 4.65%
1003 8 0.80%
482 15 3.11%
530 5 0.94%

6336 218 3.44%

These are the numbers WITHOUT Overture, just brand strategy:

Imp. Clicks CTR

3371 157 4.66%
4003 71 1.77%
789 21 2.66%
2194 83 3.78%
1215 68 5.60%
3146 146 4.64%
1861 150 8.06%
2027 91 4.49%

18606 787 4.23%

Incidentally, these figures hold up and actually improve
over longer sampling periods.

My conclusion is that we get much better traffic (~+25% more
qualified), much more of it (~+300%) and far better qualified
with a strong brand strategy than with Overture, which I have
always suspected of being over-rated.

Naturally, YMMV. I realize that this business model is not
necessarily like yours, but we had the numbers, so there ya go.
--
Rob Frankel

Big Time Branding (SM) http://www.RobFrankel.com
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Received on Fri Mar 01 2002 - 17:18:31 CST