Using Bid Management Tools to Improve Profits

MichaelWong is a search engine optimizer and pay per click enthusiast who sounds homesick. In 2000 he was able generate 23,000 monthly visitors to a site just by using Overture, which then charged a minimum of 1 cent per click. He says, "I simply built a list of some 3,000+ keyword phrases, submitted them, and the traffic just flooded in."

Wong and others are recognizing that those days are over and the increasing popularity of pay per click (PPC) advertising these days has caused rising bid prices - which require additional expense and bid monitoring.

You may be spending hours a week now tweaking bids…increasing them to maintain position… or reducing bids to close bid gaps and save money. The good news is that there are a number of PPC bid monitoring and management tools that have come to your rescue. They all have the ability to monitor bids, and the automated ones can even adjust for bid gaps, or raise bids to maintain position according to programmed instructions.

As we take a look at the usefulness of these PPC management tools I'll include a brief introduction to two of them: GO TOAST's BidManager and the Dynamic KeywordBid Maximizer (DKBM) by Apex Pacific.

Introduction to Overture Approved Management Tools:

Let's begin with some background in PPC bid monitoring/management tools. They generally fall into two different types:

Web based (services requiring a monthly subscription, i.e. GO TOAST BidManager) or,

PC based (outright software purchase, i.e. Dynamic KeywordBid Maximizer)
There was a big surge of different monitoring and management tools in the marketplace two years ago, but today you'll find under a dozen. A large part of this is due to a limit on approved vendors that Overture imposed in 2002.

Overture decided that the increased frequency of queries and bids by third party vendors were causing some risk to their internal system's performance. To assure its ability to serve advertisers, it restricted the numbers of vendors, and instituted a revolving password at login.

The current list of Overture approved vendors are: BidRank, Dynamic Keyword Bid Maximizer, Epic Sky, GO TOAST, PPC BidTracker, PPC Pro, Send Traffic and Sure Hits. You can check for updates of approved tools at here:

http://www.overture.com/d/USm/ac/su/faq_bt.jhtml

Perhaps sensing the growing popularity of bid management tools, Overture began to build-in some of the features found in the PPC management services and software. It now offers the ability to select a maximum bid, and to automate the bidding process to match bids and close gaps within Overture.

The Benefits and Cost of Bid Management Tools

Most PPC management tools offer additional functions beyond those found in Overture however. Some can monitor competitor's bids, produce reports for different parties, and perhaps most compelling -- offer the ability to interface with multiple PPC engines. So, if you're attempting to manage a hundred or more keywords across several PPC engines, you'll find these management tools really help boost your productivity and save time.

GO TOAST's BidManager Premier Service now allows you monitor/manage seventeen different engines in the same interface. They are: 7Search, Ah-ha, Bay9, BrainFox, ePilot, Espotting (US, France, Germany, UK) FindWhat, GoClick, Google, Kanoodle, Search 123, SearchFeed, Sprinks, and Turbo10.

The Dynamic Keyword Bid Maximizer Advanced Version currently monitors/managers 11 engines. They include: FindWhat, 7Search, Ah-ha, Lycos AdBuyer, Espotting (US, UK and Germany), Epilot, Kanoodle, Xuppa, and Sprinks.

One of the chief considerations in picking a PPC management tool is cost. Smaller advertisers frequently select management software that runs on your PC, like the Dynamic Keyword Bid Maximizer, which is considerably less in price.

For example, if you had 500 words you were monitoring 6 times a day, it would cost you approximately $650 a month with GO TOAST. (The number of words and number of times accessed per day being relevant to the pricing schedule.) Using DKBM you can manage 501 to 5,000 keywords as often as every hour, for a one-time purchase of $399.95.

There is one feature in GO TOAST that I am drawn to however. The Basic ROI Tracking service included with BidManager allows you to track which keywords and which engines are producing sales, both overall and in relation to your cost per click. Using it you can determine which search terms bring you the best conversion. While DKBM doesn't do this, there are fairly inexpensive traffic analysis services you could subscribe to that will track ROI for pay per click buys. (Indeed you can just subscribe to GO TOAST's Profit Builder Premium Service, which is offered outside of BidManager, and starts at $49.95/month +$.001 per page view and get these same capabilities.)

In conclusion, before you make any decision on a bid management tool you should also know that the number of PPC management tools continue to drop. It pays to be cautious if you decide to go the software route. Sometime back, a popular software called PPCMaximizer was bought by SavePerClick, who in turn was bought by ClickPatrol, who then closed down after suggesting clients migrate to GO TOAST. As with any software purchase, when you buy it you are normally only entitled to minor updates - so releases of any new, improved versions may also require you to purchase upgrades not all that far down the road.