Overture Minimum Bid Rates Doubles
 

As forecasted on many PPC/SEO boards, the minimum per click rate just doubled effective 10pm EST (7pm PST). Just thought I'd let everyone who advertises on Overture know...

Attached the email from Overture:

--- New Minimum Bid ---
In the year ahead, you're going to see a number of innovative enhancements to the Overture service that will take your paid search program to a whole new level, allowing you to capture even more qualified leads from a wide range of affiliate partners. To help make these changes happen, as well as to offset the increased costs associated with securing long-term domestic and international distribution partners, Overture is instituting a moderate price increase, raising the minimum bid from $0.05 to $0.10, beginning today

WG

that's not so bad considering that 99,5% of every profitable keyword were already going for more than 0,05$ in the first 10 positions

Yeah, a whole new "Low" level for your bank account and a whole new "High" level for theirs...

I know what ya mean I wish 90% of my keywords were 10 cents.

Funny how they took in $199 million in revenues for Q4 of last year, reported a 140% increase in traffic growth over 2002, and they have the nerve of telling customers that the additional 5c per click minimum is to offset increased expenses.

WG

you know how it is, the more you got, the more you want ..

and it's even worst (or better for some people) if the company is public .. :warning

our minimum is still 3 cents. we distribute results to most of the same network. and - we love our adult webmasters :angel

hit me up and we'll get you started on an adult pay per click se account from an adult ppc se.

if you don't have an account yet, click here, sign up and i'll match you 25%. when's tha last time Overcharge did that for you?

-mattb

i wonder how big the staff is at Overture.They need to cut some jobs not raise bids lol

I read the rumours on PPC boards too and was submitting like mad these days. Some shit went through, other is still waiting for their editors.

What I wonder is will they accept my pending 5c bids when they review it or will they just update them to 10c.

I lost my ass with them on a pretty big deal.

Shit the tgp traffic coming in did alot better

moderate price increase

100% increase is moderate?

My thoughts exactly.

Fuck Overture

Anyone here bought click from sex.com before?
How did it go?

Here's the complete email that I got:

Dear Overture Advertiser,
Over the last several years, Overture's pioneering Pay-For-Performance? search model has helped thousands of advertisers reach their online marketing goals with one of the Web's most targeted, cost-effective marketing vehicles. Today, the Overture network continues to be the largest of its kind, enabling advertisers to reach 80 percent of active U.S. Internet users through strong partnerships with leading portals and Web sites such as MSN, Yahoo!, AltaVista, Infospace, Lycos, CNN and many others.

New Minimum Bid

In the year ahead, you're going to see a number of innovative enhancements to the Overture service that will take your paid search program to a whole new level, allowing you to capture even more qualified leads from a wide range of affiliate partners. To help make these changes happen, as well as to offset the increased costs associated with securing long-term domestic and international distribution partners, Overture is instituting a moderate price increase, raising the minimum bid from $0.05 to $0.10, beginning today.

New "Grandfathered" Bids

To minimize the financial impact this change will have on our valued advertisers, all existing listings with bids between $0.05 and $0.09 will be "grandfathered" at their current max bid for the foreseeable future. Going forward, if you wish to make any bid changes to these grandfathered listings, your new bid must be at least $0.10. However, you may continue to update titles, descriptions and URLs for your grandfathered listings without affecting your bid. All new listings created from today forward must meet the $0.10 minimum bid.

Previously Grandfathered Bids Below $0.05 To Increase

As you know, your Overture account currently contains at least one listing priced below the former minimum bid of $0.05. Because you are a long-time advertiser and we appreciate your business, Overture will continue to offer you our lowest possible cost per click for these listings, moving them to $0.05 on March 29, 2003. Please note, as mentioned above, if you choose to make any bid changes to these listings, your new bid must be at least $0.10, however you may update titles, descriptions and URLs for these listings without changing your bid.

You may view all of your listings with bids below $0.10 by logging into the DirecTraffic Center®, accessible via the following link: http://dtc.overture.com. Once there, click on the Manage Listings tab and go to the Max Bid column. By clicking on the up arrow on the left, you can sort your listings from lowest to highest bids.

Again, we appreciate your business. If you have any questions about Overture's minimum bid requirements, you may wish to review a list of frequently asked questions, or contact us using the Support Request Form, available under the Support Center tab within the DirecTraffic Center.

Sincerely,

Paul Schulz
Senior Vice President, Marketing
Overture Services

they suck cock. There are many mainstream keywords that can't be profitable at 10cents. They do know that and will end up all to same big affiliates like ebay.

This should be beneficial to people like Findwhat, Kanoodle and search123. More cost efficient traffic they can gobble up now....Our avg CPC w/ all of them combined is about 6 cents and we are doing just fine with a couple of our other sites....

this can indeed turn out good!!!

i prefer hitbot over kanoodle

true dat sales are much higher on good hitbot traffic!

At first I was doing well with Hitbot, but that slowed way down. Kanoodle does well for me. I like their personalized rep service. They have had the same guy doing all the adult stuff over there for like 3 years he knows his shit. Search123 does good too.

Bad news.

I still have an account with a bunch of 1c bids, which brings me 500 to 1000 clicks a day. At 10c a click it will be 10 times more expensive.

Fuck overture! Do you agree?

The markets don't seem to be too impressed with the bid increase. Overture's stock is getting hammered again today, and has been getting killed for the past month or so.

Overture was incredible 2 years ago (when it wasn't called Overture anyway), but getting good SE placement was a lot easier in that time anyway

I'm pretty sure they will add them for 10 cents, and not 5c.

I am sure if lots of advertisers sent them a message of "protest" against this raise, they would consider it.

> I still have an account with a bunch of 1c bids, which brings
> me 500 to 1000 clicks a day. At 10c a click it will be 10
> times more expensive.

Ive got one which brings in 7000 clicks a day from almost 12000 listings, all at $0.01

I wont ever look at Overture again if they boost my grandfathered listings to $0.05

Its a shame because everyone is struggling as it is with this problem economy which is going to get worse. Now they're gonna do that and traffic across the web will collapse for a lot of businesses.

I dont understand why they dont just introduce a new minimum for new advertisers instead of messing with everyone elses.