OK so I recently started a campaign with both Google Adwords and Microsoft Adcenter. This is a keyword link where my ad links directly to the vendor site. After a lot of research and some keyword advice directly from the vendor, I ended up with a monster 950 keyword list. This particular vendor also allows you to bid on trademark related keywords. Keep in mind that that the vendor has a set limit on how much I can spend for a lot of these keywords. After the first day I raised all bids to $.35. Then I uploaded this entire list to both campaigns and heres my results as of now (2 days):

Adcenter

Adwords

First of all I would like to remind again that these results are coming from all 950 keywords with matching bids. Microsoft ad network is clearly doing much better than Adwords even though Adwords has way more impressions. That is a sign to me that Google is flooded with affiliates bidding on keywords pushing my bid way down to the bottom of the list. I think I have some hope with Adcenter still.

But what concerns me most is how low the number of impressions I am receiving from both campaigns. From the research I have done so far, it seems like I’m going to have to break down each list into smaller campaigns with more specialized ads for smaller groups of keywords. Since about 60% of my keywords aren’t restricted, I am going to start playing with the bids little by little till I find some kind of sweet spot. Once I get a feel for the trends on these keywords, I will be willing to pay a lot for these keywords because the vendor is willing to pay a lot just for a lead that gets a quote.

Once I have done that I will come back with performance updates.