Yahoo Search Marketing (Overture) UK

Overture is bad, but Miva is even worse — Miva is a TOTAL fraud (and I even managed to get some credits back but never bothered to use it).

I tried gambling PPC everywhere (2-3 years ago) and ended up working ONLY with AdWords. The traffic seemed genuine and the (complex) campaigns were even slightly profitable, but did not justify the time needed to maintain/fine-tune them.

Overture UK has simply announced that they will be following the lead of their US parent as well as renaming themselves as Yahoo! Search Marketing at the end of February, along with everything of the other European Overture sites.

Hi Folks

I tried both Miva US and recently UK. Traffic from both was poor. Miva UK have dropped a set up fee of £79 (about $155) to have their ‘experts’ set up your account and pick keywords based on ‘real time consumer data’. Wonder why?

They say your add will appear across their network of partners, the well known names they happily advertise, but if you not quick a little line of text also says ‘on partner search engines and next to relevant content on partner sites’.

On checking what was arriving from where, 99% of what they sent me came from ONE obscure search engine.

In short and being polite – Won’t be giving them any more cash.

Poker Casino & Bingo Gambling Free Bonus Guide

:rasberry:

So what countries can you run PPC in and expect a fair shot just like the old days?

No joy here with Overture either. Binned them a long time ago.:mad:

I’ve also had poor conversions with overture uk. With the quality of the traffic the most I would pay is 50 cents a click. From what I can tell the traffic is as fraudulent as the next PPC.

Back in the day gamblehouse and casinoprophet would pay upwards of $40 a click on overture USA. It’s rumored that they had kickbacks. The reason for this is it would drive the price up for everyone else.

I’m assuming something similar is happening at overture uk.

Then again, if they get high rollers here and there it might warrant spending that much.

furthermore ..

MIVA has gotten so bad that I don’t even give it more than a passing glance nowadays.

And its a damn shame because FW may have never been outstanding … it was at least worth consideration.

I used to spend well over $5000 a month at any given PPC worth its weight and now MIVA is lucky to see $300 or $400 out of me.

Sorry to have to enlighten you to this matter when so near the holidays but maybe … just maybe you guys weren’t aware of how bad things have gotten and maybe … just maybe you’ve been scratching your heads trying to figure out why your income (at least in this niche) has been driven down in keywords rates instead of it increasing like simple logic would demand IF the traffic was capable of producing the kind of results which are seen every day from search engines that actually have real people typing into the search box in an honest intention ….

Its not rocket science.

Regards

and my reply to her reply.

Hi Ann,

quote: If you can provide your referrer logs, I can complete a traffic review and see if there was any fraudulent activity unquote:

Ann, please don’t insult my intelligence. I’ve been in the gambling industry for 7 years now and I can without checking any logs … tell you that if I’d seen as much traffic as you’re site sent me at the low cost of $.15 a click … which is a considerable number of clicks once added up; that if that had been real people who had truly been in search of something that requires typing into the search box .. “online casino” (for example) that I’d be considering getting on a plane and coming to where you are so that I could give you a hug and money for that evening’s dinner at a nice restaurant.

Its just a waste of my time to chase down the information you’re requesting as its obvious to me that anybody who has any kind of experience in the search industry could immediately see the red flags coming up when they were told that an advertiser had bid the minimum possible cost for clicks and still had in 24 hours time used up their ad budget …..

come on.

S.

Miva is a TOTAL fraud

saddly must agree. There was a time when Findwhat was half-decent but those times are far in the past (in my experience).

I just got thru writing them because I’d started some non-gambling keyword campaigns with them only to see the budget I’d deposited into their site .. be eaten up in 24 hours because I reduced the gambling campaigns to the lowest possible bid instead of turning them off.

MIVA responded

I checked your account and you have successfully placed all of your gambling ads OFFLINE. If you can provide your referrer logs, I can complete a traffic review and see if there was any fraudulent activity. If we do find anything out of the ordinary, we will issue a refund.

Here’s what I wrote them:

Hi, how do I pause my gambling campaigns? It never fails no matter how much I deposit … and despite the fact that I make very low bids … the next day my money is gone and I’ve nothing or little to show for it. That said: i don’t want to delete the campaigns because maybe someday you guys will figure out how to get the click fraud/or whatever it is that causes this … fixed and provide decent traffic.

Its absolutely unbelievable to me that so much (gambling) traffic can be generated on such low bids when if the traffic was worthy it would demand click prices similar to that of Overture’s a few years back when clicks were as much as $25 to $40. Apparently there is no safe positioning left anymore at Miva when I can go thru so much money at $.15 a click. I would think Miva would be extremely concerned such results occur as whether you know it or not your reputation amongst the gambling industry has fallen from being a place that was okay if you stayed away from major keywords that demanded high prices to having traffic the equivalent of nothing short of a parade of fraudulent clicks. I’m not unreasonable and have not complained all these years but its gotten so bad that I can’t even have a gambling site listed at Miva because regardless how low I bid …. every single time my budget is used up within 24 to 48 hours.

MIVA sucks. Too bad too because once again its not being able to see the dollar for the dime in front of them that they’re trying to steal.

Currently you can rank #1 for many fairly common keywords while bidding the minimum. That tells me they’re income from gambling is dwindling to near nothing … when you compare to the $25+ per click Overture was getting about 4 years ago …

I wonder how they’d be sitting now if they’d bothered to police their traffic in even the smallest honest attempt to cut out frauds?

Reputation is an EXTREMELY hard thing to recover once it has become so worn with time and exposure to those that it should matter most …. and do you think the casino sponsors will take note of this?

Not most of them. They’re too busy scheming on how to cheat you out of what little you’ve got left coming to you to bother to see that if they think things are tough now while they still have a few quality affiliates left to their credit … what things are going to be like in another year or so.

Call it Karma, or “what goes around comes around” or whatever you want … but taking the low road will always result in eventual situations which are much, much worse than they would have been if the program had just kept plucking along … INCREASING that reputation instead of drowning it …. to see the kind of quality results that will happen for sponsers smart enough to not run-off the very people who have earned them the money to get them where they are now … in a year or two’s time later down the road when they’ll not only be enjoying the continued earnings from their loyal affiliates but also all the earnings which will be coming in from all the new partners they will have accumulated thru word of mouth via recommendations.

The time will come when places that have cheated us or that are intending to cheat us … when they will no longer see the money coming in that is currently blinding them to choose to take the low road.

well I have to go have another session with my anger control doctor.

Dr Smirnoff may have to call in additional help for me from Dr Bacardi.

Anyone…?