Greg Boser (aka WebGuerrilla) commented yesterday on a recent Media Post article. It was an interesting article, but I disagree about one of the major conclusions they drew from it.
According to the study of 1,200 PPC advertisers, those with larger budgets preferred Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM, née Overture) and MSN over Google:
[W]hen Outsell looked more closely at the results, it found that the most enthusiastic Google fans also had the smallest marketing budgets. The average marketing budget of respondents who rated Google “extremely” effective totaled $3.7 million. But average budgets for those who considered Yahoo and MSN extremely effective came to $4.6 million.
Be careful before taking that as proof that YSM or MSN is actually better than Google, though. For one thing, is there really a material difference between budgets of $3.7 million and $4.6 million? As “a” writes in over the comments on Greg’s blog: Those who spend 3 or 4 million will not care…but suddenly, those who spend 5 million turn out to be coldly rational? I could see there being a big difference in preference between $37,000 and $4.6 million, or even $370,000 and $4.6 million, but $3.7 and $4.6 don’t seem statistically different.
Second, my experience tells me just the opposite. AdWords gives you much more ability to fine-tune your bids to really dial-in optimal conversion costs. YSM doesn’t give you anywhere near the same level of control. It’s like comparing a shotgun with a sniper rifle.
That said, that may in fact be the reason that many people prefer YSM. While a sniper rifle gives you much more accurate results, a shotgun is obviously much easier to use. Even for those without great PPC skills, YSM gives them ability to get good results without worrying too much about what they’re doing, and those who have never gotten down into the level of control AdWords provides might not even notice a difference between the two.
I’m just guessing on that, though, as I very much prefer AdWords. It’s not even close. And I’m looking forward to trying out MSN as soon as possible.
In the meantime, what do you think? Do you prefer YSM over Google, or the other way around? Why?
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