Testing Out Other Paid Search Engines
Posted: June 6th, 2008
Most search engine marketers are content with their results from the main paid search advertising networks: Google AdWords; Yahoo Search Marketing; Microsoft adCenter and; Ask.com Sponsored Listings. However, the advertiser saturation in these ad networks begets more cost-effective paid search engines elsewhere. Let’s see why.
The smaller pool of advertisers on other paid search networks generates a lower average pay-per-click for most keywords. Having your advert displayed consistently on the first page of a lesser-known search engine may be a wiser allocation of funds than showing up sporadically on the third page of Google. This becomes more evident if you’re looking for a short term burst in traffic (promotional sale, limited-time offers, etc).
While the main search engines may differ slightly in overall demographic, smaller search engines may offer a more targeted demographic. These hidden gems might even be specialized for specific categories and be able to reach previously untapped markets.
Here are a few lesser-known paid search engines that you can try out.
MIVA - The MIVA Precision Network specializes in the business niches.
Facebook Ads - A new and growing advertising network.
Search123 - Owned by ValueClick Media, Search123 is known for producing high levels of traffic at appreciably lower pay-per-click prices.
I’ll drink to that.
It can be quite frustrating trying to conquer Google, as in can you snatch Google before Google snatches you . . . .
I just came across Search Engine Panel while clicking away on the grand-daddy of traffic exchange sites, ClickThru, and in that I am recently looking at the realm of SEO and beginning to become more familiar with the entire concept, your page caught my attention out of the miriad of adverts that fly by while clicking wildly in an attempt to become an online-based work-at-home kazillionaire. I will most definitely be checking out MIVA, Facebook Ads (hmmm, interesting concept, this one) and Search123. Cheers for the info. This warrants linking to on my weblog. Later on, yeah? Iago de Otto the Intrepid Netrepreneur at Chaos Chasm II in Taiwan
Thanks for the info. Maybe i’ll try them after this.
Recently I appeared for exam in information retrieval..their I read about search engine architectures,and mostly they use same concept of crawling and indexing in a different manner….but still there is so much variation in results of same query to them….
Thanks for letting us know about these lesser known search engines. I have heard Facebook Ads uses more of a targeted marketing approach, which makes more sense, but would be good to know how successful this has been for them.
When I try the smaller SE I always end up with at least 50% click fraud in my traffic. They just dont have the organic traffic or the systems in place to avert the click farms. So you may save a few pennies in your PPC price but you lose it in quality of traffic.
Click fraud is a possible concern with the smaller networks, although third parties such like Facebook Ads aren’t that susceptible to this since there are no real user-publishers.
In any case, I just want people to be open to testing other paid search engines. Don’t throw all your advertising budget at a particular one without testing first.
Thanks for the caveat, Alan.