© 2007 by David Gillaspey (resume). All Rights Reserved.
 
Permission is granted to print and distribute copies of this article freely for personal use or for the internal purposes of your church or organization, as long as the author's name, the copyright and the source (www.greatchurchwebsites.org) appear on the first page of every copy. This material may not, however, be posted on your organization's website in any form without explicit permission.

PART THREE: how to advertise with Overture and its affiliates

Overture offers sponsored listings, just as Google does, called Precision Match™. Few people search the web using Overture directly, however. Rather, most people search the web using one or more of Overture's affiliate partners, which include Yahoo, MSN, Lycos or AllTheWeb — Overture itself is not consistent on this point, AltaVista, InfoSpace and CNN.com. That doesn't tell the full story, however: Overture was once independent but is now owned by Yahoo, according to the article Major Search Engines from searchenginewatch.com.

That is, Overture supplies search results from its search engine to its affiliates, automatically, behind the scenes. In the case of Yahoo, the search results from Overture would be included with listings from Yahoo's own directory when someone uses Yahoo to do a search. The result of a search on Yahoo for "awesome church web sites" (one of my search phrases) looks like this:

 

Even though I conducted the search on Yahoo's website, the sponsored listing you see actually came from Overture.

Before you sign up with Overture, study the advertiser education materials located in Overture's Advertiser Center. You can (and should) review this material before enrolling. I didn't discover the existence of this material until after I had completed signing up, which I regret.

Click here to access the tutorial center within the Advertiser Center. There are eight tutorials available, all of which you'll want to go through. Seven of the eight are made with Macromedia Flash, and so require the free Flash player. The eight tutorials are:

1) How Overture works. Covers such topics as how to select keywords for your website, how to bid on keywords, and how to write the best possible listings.

There's a lot of promotion of Overture itself in the tutorial. Be careful about that. According to the tutorial, Overture and its partner network reach 80% of "active internet users." Of that 80% of active internet users, 95% are reached via Overture's affiliate partners (the other 5% through its own search engine). Ready to sign right up? Hold on.

According to the tutorial, only the top three bidders for any keyword or search phrase get to have their sponsored listings appear in the search results of Overture's affiliate partners. Uh oh.

Let's use a real example to illustrate the problem, the search phrase "church web site." You will agree with me, I think, that this search phrase is very relevant to Great Church Websites. That is, anyone who searches on Yahoo for "church web site" ought to see my sponsored listing eventually on the search results pages, even if the placement of my ad were poor because I could only bid low. That is how things work with Google AdWords.

However, the current top bid for the search phrase "church web site" is US$3 per click-through, with a number of other advertisers bidding lesser amounts. These are commercial companies. They can (and should) afford to bid those amounts to reach potential paying customers.

At its current level of funding, Great Church Websites, a not-for-profit corporation, can't compete with commercial companies. Consequently, with Overture, I am largely unable to attract many of the people I'd like to reach by using the most popular of keywords and search phrases relevant to this site. That is because there's no way I can afford to bid high enough to be among the top three bidders. Again, these are the only advertisers who get to have their sponsored listing appear in the search results of Overture's affiliate partners. Your church budget may put you in the same boat if your budget is limited, as mine is.

I didn't realize this would be the case until after I had created an Overture account. It's not mentioned in the account activation process, described in detail below. For me, then, Google AdWords will remain the best way to promote my site.

It may sound to you as if I am using this forum to complain. No, my purpose here is to inform you, so that you may make wise decisions regarding your church's budget.

Moreover, all is not lost. Many of my keywords and search phrases are infrequently used for searches, but I include them because they still are quite relevant to this site. I have few competitors bidding against me for them. As a result, I am among the top three bidders for certain infrequently used keywords. Consequently, when someone does use one of these keywords or search phrases to do a search (on Yahoo, for example), my sponsored listing does appear.

Creating an Overture account won't cost me much in the end — I pay only for click-throughs, after all. If I don't get many click-throughs because of Overture's policies, I don't get much traffic but I don't have to pay Overture much. We both lose, therefore. Overture requires advertisers to spend at least US$20 a month. At worst I'll get dropped as an advertiser.

I think if you are a church just wanting to attract people in the area to your worship services, you should be able to come up with some keywords and search phrases that are narrow enough in scope (e.g., "episcopal salem oregon" or whatever denomination your church is a member of) that you can position your church among the top three bidders even with a bid of as low as US$0.10 or US$0.20 per click.

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Continuing with the other tutorials:

2) Match types. A tutorial about Overture's keyword match types. These govern how precise users have to be when entering search terms on Overture or any of its affiliates to see your sponsored listing among the search results (if you're among the top three bidders for that keyword or search phrase, that is). The three options are:

• Standard match (the default), which requires the user to match your keyword or search phrase exactly when searching.

• Phrase match, which allows the user to make the keyword or search phrase a part of a longer text string, albeit in exact original order. The user can still match your keyword or search phrase exactly (as above), also.

• Broad match, in which the user can enter keywords in any order and/or separate them with other words, or they can just satisfy one of the previous options.

The tutorial explains the advantages and disadvantages of each match type. After establishing an Overture account, you can change the match type (from the default), if you desire, for each of your keywords and search phrases. You don't get to make the choice while creating your account.

3) Choosing the right payment plan. Overture offers three ways to manage your advertising budget. This explains the advantages and disadvantages of each.

4) Improving your search listings. List of tips for writing the best titles and descriptions for your sponsored listings. Make sure you view this tutorial before creating your account! Some of the "tips" aren't just tips — they're things you have to do to get your listings approved by Overture's editors. The prime example of this is don't use superlatives, such as "better" and "best." The tutorial merely encourages you to not use superlatives in the titles and descriptions of your listings. In fact, you won't even be permitted to. (Trust me, I tried.) So don't write a listing that claims your church has the "hottest youth ministry in town." It won't be accepted.

5) Best practices. Topics include: selecting keywords, writing effective titles and descriptions, bidding strategies, tracking results using Overture's optional special tracking codes, and choosing the right payment option. Covers the same territory as some of the other tutorials on this webpage, you'll notice.

6) Tracking your results. How to track your results using Overture's optional special tracking codes.

7) How to find more keywords. Encourages you to generate keywords and search phrases appropriate for all three stages of the buying process: gathering information, shopping and purchasing. (You'll need to translate that in your mind to stages in a person's spiritual journey.) Each stage involves more and more potential keywords and search phrases, and each stage requires and is characterized by increased specificity. As you view this tutorial, however, keep in mind that Overture initially limits you to 40 keywords and search phrases.

8) Auto bidding. Discusses the option in which Overture automatically lowers your bid for a given keyword or search phrase to one cent more than the next lowest bid. Google Adwords offers a similar feature.

Finally, in addition to the tutorials summarized above, there is also a link to Overture's guidelines for writing the titles and descriptions of your listings. Be sure to read these guidelines! As you'll learn from what I share below, it's most helpful to prepare your listings as much as possible in advance, before you start the account sign-up procedure. You don't want to get tripped up by little things like grammar issues.

Setting up an Overture account

Start here. You can choose the Fast Track option, with its US$199 sign-up fee, and take advantage of various forms of assistance such as help with creating keywords, choosing bids and writing listings. You also benefit from a promised turnaround of only three business days. Or you can choose the Self Serve option with no sign-up fee but a turnaround of five business days. But note that elsewhere in the process, Overture speaks of a turnaround of three to five business days for the Self Serve option (see below), so perhaps they're just being conservative here.

Because I had a Google AdWords campaign ongoing, I felt confident I knew which keywords and search phrases were best for my site. Therefore, I chose the Self Serve option. Also I couldn't afford to spend US$199 to sign up for the Fast Track option.

Creating an Overture account takes eight steps officially, described in some detail below. (There's actually 10 steps, as you'll see.) If you choose the Fast Track option, there will only be seven (real) steps because Steps 3A through 3B of the Self Serve option (see below) are skipped.

Overture estimates the total time required for completing all the steps of the Self Serve option to be 30 minutes, but you should count on the process taking much much longer. They give you 90 minutes to complete each individual step of the process, however, which is fortunate. Otherwise, you lose your work and have to start over. This 90-minute limit turned out to be crucially important, as you'll see.

Read through all the steps below before attempting to do this. You'll see why that's important.

Step 1: Enter contact name, company/church name, email, phone numbers, user name and password. (Same for Fast Track option.)

Step 2: Enter church address. (Same for Fast Track option.)

Step 3A through 3C (skipped entirely in the Fast Track option). I'm actually going to talk a lot about step 3C here, as you'll see, because it greatly affects what you do in step 3A. So bear with me.

In step 3A, you enter search terms. Overture offers a "Search Term Suggestions tool," a tool like the one offered by Google AdWords. On the day I first tried to open an Overture account, pages on the site were loading like molasses, so I did not attempt to use the tool. I tried it later when the site was loading properly and can now recommend it. Regardless, I planned to just use (copy and paste) the keywords and search phrases from my Google AdWords campaign.

I planned to do that, anyway. I have 124 keywords and search phrases in my Google AdWords campaign. That sounds like a lot, but remember it includes many near-redundant keywords and search phrases (singulars, plurals and deliberate misspellings), which Google actually encourages.

Overture, by contrast, limits you to a mere 40 keywords and search phrases, initially at least. That's understandable, though, in light of the fact that sponsored listings are reviewed by editors.

In step 3C, you are asked to create the content (title, descriptive text and URL) of the listings associated with your keywords and search phrases. The deal is, the titles of each of your sponsored listings must contain the keyword or search phrase to which the listing is to be associated. Likewise, the descriptive text of each of your sponsored listings must contain the keyword or search phrase to which the listing is to be associated.

I say "must contain" but those are my words, not Overture's. The company itself merely states on the webpage that including the relevant key word or search phrase in the title and descriptive text of each of your listings improves the chances of its being approved. Get the hint? I did.

You actually have two options in step 3C: 1) create just one listing that would presumably need to include all of your keywords and search phrases. Or 2) create a different listing for each of your keywords or search phrases. That's not much of a choice, actually. If you have more than, say, two keywords or search phrases (come on, you can do better than that!), I don't see how you could possibly write a single listing that incorporates all of your keywords and search phrases, to ensure the approval of Overture's editors. Therefore, your only real option is to write a customized listing for each of your keywords and search phrases. Steel yourself!

I said above that I have 124 Google AdWords keywords and search phrases. Overture only allows 40. So I had to edit my list severely right away, which wasn't easy. But as you'll see, I ended up being sort of thankful for Overture's policy.

I discovered that Overture dropped some of the plural words and phrases in my list, and re-arranged the words of some other phrases to suit its needs. This happened between step 3A and step 3B, but I didn't realize it until I got to step 3C. For example, Overture dropped various search phrases I used with Google AdWords that contain the word "website." It only permits the use of "web site." That's a bit of a concern for me because, judging from my Google AdWords results, more people search the web (Google, at least) using "website" than "web site." I can only hope Overture's search engine accommodates this behind the scenes. Fortunately, my tests on Yahoo and CNN.com show this to be the case.

As an additional example, Overture completely dropped from my list those search phrases that contained the word or words "websites" or "web sites," that is, the plural forms. But again, my tests on Yahoo and CNN.com show this to not be a problem.

Finally, my Google search phrases "internet ministry" and "web ministry" were changed by Overture to "ministry internet" and "ministry web." That certainly reflects how a computer would organize data, but try writing descriptive text for a sponsored listing that uses the phrase "ministry internet"! (You can't and I didn't try.) My tests on Yahoo and CNN.com, however, show that either variation of these two search phrases work OK.

(On the other hand, Overture accepted "church home pages," "church webmasters" and "webservants." This shows that Overture doesn't reject all plural forms of keywords, not does it split all web-related compounds into two words.)

So, Overture further reduced my already severely edited list of 40 keywords and search phrases down to about 22. I restored three phrases from my original list of 124, to get the list back up to 25 keywords and search phrases.

In step 3C, I chose the option to write a separate listing for each keyword and search phrase on my list. Overture then presented me with a very deep webpage with many HTML forms for me to complete, one after another down the length of the webpage. There was one HTML form with three fields for each keyword and search phrase on my list. Here is an example of just one (note the helpful auto fill feature):

 

Here's the truth: It's extremely difficult, and time-consuming, to write a distinct listing for each of your keywords and search terms that incorporates that keyword or search term in the title as well as in the descriptive text. Remember I said above that Overture gives you up to 90 minutes to complete each step of the sign-up process? After 90 minutes on this step, I was only halfway through my pared down list of 25 keywords and search phrases. (Halfway through writing the listings.) That was the point at which I began to appreciate Overture's limitations on number of keywords.

I didn't want to lose the work I already had done, so I copied and pasted everything I already written (in the HTML form fields) to a Filemaker Pro database, and continued to work on writing content for my listings offline for another two and a half hours. So it took me four hours to write listings for a mere 25 keywords and search phrases. And I didn't even know at that point if my listings would pass muster with Overture's editors.

So now you see why I have devoted so much time to discussing step 3C here in step 3A. As much as possible, you'll want to create your keyword and search phrase list offline, before you ever start the Overture sign-up process. (Use Google's Keyword Tool to get you started, even if you don't end up signing up with Google.)

Create your listings content (title and descriptive text) offline, too. Write a custom listing for each of your keywords and search phrases. Remember that for each, you have to incorporate the keyword or search phrase somehow in both the title and the descriptive text. Do as much as possible of this before beginning the Overture sign-up process. Remember to read the editorial guidelines mentioned above first.

The title of each of your listings must be 40 characters or less in length. The descriptive text of each of your listings must be 190 characters or less in length. Compare that to Google's limit of 35 characters for the title and the same for each of two allowable lines of descriptive text. The reason for the difference is simple: Overture's sponsored listings appear full screen, whereas Google's sponsored listings must fit a narrow column on the righthand side of the search results.

It's hard enough writing listings for each of your keywords and search phrases without having to ensure you stay within the maximum number of characters permitted. You certainly don't want to have to count characters! I used Filemaker Pro's "Length(fieldname)" function to display a count of the number of characters in the title and descriptive text fields in real time as I was writing my listings offline. That was a real time-saver.

Fortunately for the many (or most) of you who aren't Filemaker Pro developers as I am, you can accomplish the same thing in Excel using the LEN(cell_reference) function. So, I encourage you to write your listings ahead of time in Excel, using the aforementioned function to help you stay under the character limits. Then you can copy and paste from Excel into your browser when you get to step 3B in the Overture account creation process.

Note that if you choose to use Overture's Fast Track option, editorial approval is promised to be "automatic." I'm not sure to what extent that would lessen the burden of creating ads.

As stated above, Overture has a policy (like Google) forbidding the use of superlatives such as "best" or "better" in sponsored listings, unless the term is part of the company name. I initially composed my listings using phrases like "the best of church web site design." When I submitted my listings after step 3C the next day (after starting the sign-up procedure all over), Overture returned a webpage showing most of my listings flagged with polite messages warning me about the use of superlatives in the title and/or description.

So I went back to my Filemaker Pro database and replaced the illegal phrases with "great" (i.e., "great church web site design"). That might be considered a superlative, but I can use it because it is part of the corporate name Great Church Websites. I then copied the edited listings back into the HTML forms. I did the rewriting in the Filemaker Pro database because — who knows — I might use this data again for another search engine.

So I ended up taking another two hours to edit and re-input my 25 listings — a total of six hours spent over two days to write and input listings for a mere 25 keywords and search phrases. Save yourself time and leave out superlatives when you write your listings.

Step 3B: In this step, you choose a maximum cost-per-click for each keyword and search phrase in your list.

Here, Overture offers two big advantages over Google AdWords. First, you are immediately shown in a table the top five current bids for each keyword and search term. Second, you can click on a "View Bids Tool" link generated for each of your keywords and search phrases. When you do so, you are shown (once you get past a security feature that appears only the first time) the actual listings (from other companies) currently associated with that keyword or search phrase, the current rank of each of the listings, and the bid associated with each of the listings. It's like being at a real auction and seeing who else is bidding, and how much!

With these two tools, you can intelligently select the right maximum cost-per-click for all your keywords and search terms, in light of your budget, as you are creating your account. You can tweak these later using Overture's account management tools, also.

The maximum bid I saw for any of the keywords and search phrases on my list was US$3.00 — way out of my league! The lowest was US$0.05.

That brings up an interesting point. The webpage doesn't tell you what the allowable minimum bid is. You likely will see some bids of US$0.05 as I did. When I tried to bid US$0.05 for several of the least popular keywords, I just got error messages. I tried US$0.10 instead (more for popular keywords, of course), and that was accepted. Overture should explicitly state the minimum allowable bid, and explain the presence of the US$0.05 bids.

(Later, I saw a sentence on the account management pages that suggested this explanation: The lowest permissible bid used to be US$0.05 but now is US$0.10. The old US$0.05 bids were "grandfathered" in.)

Step 3C: See discussion under step 3A above.

Step 4 (step 3 in the Fast Track option): Select payment plan. I have summarized the three options below. For more information, view the Flash tutorial on the tutorials page. (The tutorial will encourage you to use options #1 and #2 on the basis that these options result in more visitors to your site. What it doesn't say is, "And makes more money for us.")

A US$50 non-refundable initial deposit is required for all three options. All three plans require that you spend at least US$20 a month.

1) Non-stop traffic plan. You select an amount (US$50 to US$1,000) you want your credit card to be charged when your account has three to five days worth of funds left. Your credit card may be billed multiple times in a month under this plan. (This could be a potentially expensive plan to follow.)

2) Fixed budget plan. You select a monthly budget of between US$50 to US$1,000 inclusive. Your ads stop running for the rest of the month when you reach your monthly budget. (Compare that to Google AdWords, which evenly distributes your listings' appearances — or not — throughout the day to ensure you don't exceed your daily budget and therefore your monthly budget.) Your credit card is billed no more than once a month under this plan.

3) Prepayment plan. Your ads stop running when your account hits zero. You decide when to add more money to your account and thereby reactivate your ads.

If you chose the Fast Track option, then at the bottom of this page, you would (additionally) see a "Proposal Information" area. This includes HTML form fields where you provide Overture editors with information about your site, monthly budget, search term ideas, site focus and other special information. They use this information to create your keywords, to establish bids for each and to create your sponsored listings.

Step 5 (step 4 in the Fast Track option): Choose payment method (credit card or check). For credit card, supply the usual billing info.

Step 6 (step 5 in the Fast Track option): Read and agree to Terms and Conditions.

Step 7 (step 6 in the Fast Track option): Provide Overture with customer information about you (a survey). They promise privacy.

Step 8 (step 7 in the Fast Track option): Sales pitch for an ad sales tracking and analysis program.

After the last step, you see your account information, billing information and all your listings all on one page, so you can print it for your records.

Like Google, you can manage your Overture account after it is created: add, edit and remove listings; change cost-per-click bids; view performance reports; etc.

Immediately after finishing the sign-up process, I received three emails from Overture. One was a letter reminding me that all listings would be reviewed, and the review would be completed in three to five business days. (But see next graph.) The letter also stated I would receive an email communicating the results of the review. The rest of the email was a restatement of my account information followed by all the text of my listings.

The second email was interesting. It stated that, of my 25 listings, 17 were (already!) approved, one was declined, and seven were in pending status. I can't imagine that Overture had editors waiting to jump on my listings and review them the minute I completed opening my account, especially since I chose the Self Serve option. The evidence suggests that some of the review process is automated.

(I received another email only three business days later — though with a weekend in between — informing me that the seven "pending" listings were all approved. I never received any information as to which listing was rejected or why. However, I suppose I can compare my original list of keywords and search phrases with the 24 approved ones to find out which one was rejected.)

The third email pointed me to the log-on page for the account management area of Overture's website.

PART FOUR: other paid listings

 

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