SuitcaseLifestyle.com

So here I am again to drop some valuable information on you.

Here’s what I did.

I created an advertising campaign, with a moderate number of keywords (50 or so) and 8 ad variations. I put this campaign up on Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter.

I’ve let them run without me touching them and I’m going to share my conversion data with you.

One thing I’d like to mention, is that I did not put all of the campaigns up at the same time, so the overall spend is not an accurate reflection of available impressions between the search engines. But I believe the conversion figures are somewhat accurate enough to reflect how the search engines perform.

So… Bing rules! It’s converting about three times better than Adwords. It’s interesting to note as well that in Adwords my bidding level has put my ads in position 3. My CPA(Cost-Per-Acquisition) would be even higher if I bidded for position 1. I honestly thought Yahoo would perform better than it did, I should also mention that Yahoo’s conversion tracking did not work for me, so in summary Yahoo is a piece of shit. Luckily I can see my conversions on Prosper202, but you’re average Yahoo customer probably has no idea what they’re getting for their money!

Now I have to bring up some interesting points. Considering the following:

- I source my product overseas at the lowest price possible
- At a CPA of around $40, I’m breaking even, meaning Yahoo and Google are losing me money
- On Adwords, I’m in position 3, so there are 2 other advertisers losing even more than me*

*Yes my Quality Score on Adwords is high

As affiliate marketers, we are used to tracking everything, so we know exactly where we are losing money and where we are making it. From there it’s a matter of cut the shit, keep the good, scale and make more money. But it seems to me that there are obviously a ton of advertisers on platforms like Adwords who don’t have access to the kind of data I have, and are probably not even using the Adwords built in conversion tracking.

This is a big problem.

If advertisers don’t track performance, they won’t realize they are losing money. Mix in sales from SEO, affiliates, offline and other sources, I’m guessing a lot of these companies just allocate a budget to ‘online advertising’ each month and blow through it. Meanwhile, I’m trying to compete with advertisers who are quite happy to drive CPCs to ridiculous unprofitable levels.

I can only imagine this problem getting worse as time goes on. More and more businesses are getting online and trying to get exposure. Adwords is one of the obvious and easiest places to advertise on. With most people already busy with the operation of their businesses, they don’t have time to learn the complexities of a complicated ad system let alone how to track performance. It’s a shame really, the only winner here is Google.

That said, I can still optimize my campaigns to break even or better. And picking up new customers and expanding my mailing list is worth the effort.

In summary: Be careful with Adwords, competition is high and margins are slim. Get your ass on Bing! With poor performance from Yahoo and the lack of serious volume, it’s almost a waste of time. We’ll see how the Yahoo/Microsoft search alliance shapes up…