With Pay Per Click advertising dominated by the likes of Google and Yahoo, are the small (aka second tier) PPC networks worth using?

I stopped using 2nd tier networks a couple of years ago when I noticed fraud becoming a major problem - the network I mainly used just hadn’t kept up with the times in terms of fraud screening and I certainly didn’t have the time to do it for them. I understand that some of the larger 2nd tiers have improved their fraud screening capabilities since then.

While I haven’t used a small PPC network since, the team at Marketing Experiments ran some trials recently on 7 networks and the results are very interesting. Aside from the expected lower traffic levels, the click through rates and conversions not only varied wildly between networks, but also the type of industry being advertised.

In a nutshell, as a result of their research, Marketing Experiments advises:

- Exercise caution when running campaigns on the smaller PPC engines; you’ll need to be vigilant in monitoring.

- Run test campaigns across several 2nd tier PPC networks simultaneously to gauge viability.

- If a particular engine shows a glimmer of promise, then text different ad text formats on that engine.

- Even if a small PPC engine returns clicks and sales, weigh up the time investment vs. the volume; you might find it’s not worth the effort to maintain and monitor.

If you are considering running campaigns on smaller PPC engines, I recommend spending the time to do the full Marketing Experiments report - they do a fantastic job of their research and there’s always something useful to learn from their trials.

Related articles:

PPC advertising - minimizing the cost
Pay Per Click for beginners
PPC fraud - detection and prevention strategies