The Blog of Xangis

Comparing my All Possible Worlds ad statistics for Yahoo search marketing and Google adwords, here’s what I get:

Google:
~82k impressions, 22 clicks, cost < $2.

Yahoo:
~23.5k impression, 28 clicks, cost < $3.

So, for the same ads and the same terms, Yahoo seems to be delivering more effective results. Both clickthrough rates are still abysmal, and I chalk that up to a combination of non-compelling ads and an audience that is like herding cats. While Google has a larger reach, keep in mind that I’ve been running the Yahoo ads for 16 days and the Google for 23. Doing the math, I get about double impressions with Google.

Why is this?

I have two theories, and maybe there is some truth in each of them.

The first theory is that people are more desensitized to Google ads because they have been around longer. People have learned to ignore them just like they’ve long-ago learned to ignore banner ads.

The second is that since Adwords is open to the public, they are less selective about who they allow to join. This results in a lot of spammy made-for-adsense and second-rate sites showing the Google ads. Those sites have erratic traffic pattterns and very low clickthrough rates.

Since Yahoo advertising is still in beta, they won’t just hand publisher accounts to anyone. They tend to only approve quality sites with higher traffic — sites that people visit on purpose instead of being tricked or directed into. I’m not saying that all of Yahoo’s sites are good, nor that Google’s sites are bad, just that the bar is higher on Yahoo.

When Yahoo opens their publisher program to the general public I suspect that this will change and the bar will lower, making both providers just about equal in terms of clickthroughs and quality of publishers. For now, however, Yahoo has the better product. This is especially true due to Google’s irritating practice of using their “quality score” to randomly deactivate ads that aren’t getting enough clickthrough. It’s smart business, but the last thing I want to do is tweak and adjust my ads and keywords every day just to keep them running.

Even so, internet-based advertising is absolutely amazing. More than 100,000 impressions of my ads have been shown (not seen - most people ignore ads in any form), 50 people have taken action (even if there hasn’t been a significant stream of buyers) and my total cost has been less than $5.00. $5 will get you a month’s placement of a banner ad on ONE single site with 2k unique visitors per month. Even with no sales, it’s worth it just for the product awareness. In fact, I’m very curious how many people have seen the ad and then typed the web address into the browser. After all, some people refuse to click on ads because of the intense fear of spyware that has been instilled in the public…

In what other advertising medium can you get such a huge circulation before a large audience for so cheap?

To compare, I’ve placed small ads in two copies of Dark Wisdom magazine, which has a circulation somewhere around 30k, at a cost of about $120. Mind you, these ads are permanent and can be seen long after the run is done by those reading old issues AND can be seen more than once, but still — at 24x the cost for an arguably similar reach, it’s proof that internet advertising is EFFICIENT.

Now that I’ve got the hang of how the system works I just need to get the hang of turning that system into INCOME.