Adwords is a war-zone.

Adwords, in some cases, has become a war-zone. A few select companies ruined it for everyone by commissioning its affiliates for leads inbound from paid searches. Hundreds of "marketers" all compete for the same keywords, advertising only a few of the same companies dozens of times for each keyword. Because of the ridiculous number of campaigns running simutaniously for these high-volume keywords, it's nearly impossible to legally maintain a decent CTR, even when matching the top bids.

These commissioned "marketers" devastate eachother by maxing out each other's budgets by generating fraudulent clicks through proxies. Google only investigates sudden spikes in traffic. Many of the marketers I've encountered run these scam campaigns as full time jobs and are able to manipulate the system methodically and indetectibly.

Why are these larger companies commissioning affiliates for traffic rather than run the campaign themselves? Either they're lazy or they know that the conversion rate isn't profitable.

If you're a smaller company in a high-volume market, don't even bother with Adwords. The best you can hope for is a double digit page placement, and if you do dare to venture into page 1 territory, you'll get F-ed in the A. Only multi-million dollar companies have the purchasing power to survive attacks from scammers, who eventually give in and focus on fresh meat.

If you're suspicious of your conversion rate, set up a redirect and log IPs. You'll be surprised.

 

Yes adwords can be a minefield especially for the competitive keywords.

I think the latter is true here and that is why they choose this method of promotion. For your sake I hope their capmaigns and the "Marketers" move on to another keyword/campaign.

 

It's the same everywhere. The big boys put the squeeze on and everyone else gets kicked in the face, or has to move into a new area. For some keywords/products, the big sites are the only players in town, which means the quality of competition goes down, so there's less choice for everyone.

Better start selling those hand-made, unique items that you alone have exclusive access to.

 

I've noticed this more and more too.

Especially eBay ads and also Early Learning Centre seams to throw up a dozen aff links. Well annoying since it's basically duplicate content which should be filtered IMO.

I don't get it how eBay AdWords campaigns can be profitable if you don't target for registrations. CJ commission is abuot the same as PPC costs.

Anyway, I'm sure this form of AdSpam will get tackled at one point.

 

I see. Well, the first campaign must be a big plunge in the deep dark depths then...

Amazon seems more profitable to me when you do it like that.

 

Are you sure it is not a trick by your competitors? I know some advertisers who manipulate some keywords and would bid too high to keep any new advertisers off their pie

 

Hi,

Big boys have a massive budget no doubt and people trying to get a little bit of a foot hold have little to no chance.

It’s a shame because the same can also be said about seo, companies with money to throw around get sites optimised for 1st or second page results, again what chance has a new site got if you have little to no budget unless your in the know.

Best Regards