At the end of the month, I like to evaluate my campaign performance a bit more in-depth.

In late April, I set up a PPC campaign with 700 keywords, and 3 ads as identically as possible on Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing (aka Panama), and Microsoft AdCenter.

This campaign was in a high-value consumer electronics area, with a medium amount of traffic (no it wasn't "digital cameras").

So, for the first 30 days of May, here are the stat lines:

Source	Clicks	CTR	Avg CPC	Total Spend	Conversion Rate
AdWords	605	1.25%	0.31	$185.67	10.4%
Panama	655	1.3%	0.28	$186.25	8.4%
AdCenter	20	1.77%	0.26	$5.14	n/a

Just a couple of observations:

• I have no idea why AdCenter gets almost no traffic for this campaign!? Frankly, I don't spend much time analyzing adCenter anymore. Weird stuff like this means it's not worth the time.
• The volume and CTR similarity between Google and Yahoo is pretty amazing in this case. I usually see more volume from Google in most campaigns, but in competitive spaces, I think my Google volume is limited by not bidding more.
• The conversion rate difference between Google and Yahoo is something I find pretty consistent with other campaigns. My theory is simply that on the respective search networks, Google's partner quality is higher than Yahoo's. I.e. there aren't as many garbitrage sites in the Google network.

Labels: adcenter, adwords, panama

¶ 5/30/2007