Smaller pay-per-click tools in the UK

Although Google Ads (AdWords) and Overture currently dominate the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising market, there are a number of other options to use that all use the same principle of bidding for top ranking position, although traffic volumes and coverage will vary depending on the network of sites used.

However, if you find that pay-per-click is effective for your business and you want to try some wider coverage of the smaller search tools in the
UK, you should consider these options:

Espotting

Espotting was a strong competitor of Overture’s several years ago, but its partnership with the large search engines has dropped away and it now serves results across several hundred smaller search tools, including business directories and shopping portals. As a result, the number of advertisers and the bid levels have dropped on this tool and it could be a cheap way of extending coverage through PPC advertising.

Due to the profile of websites on its network, Espotting tends to be more suitable for retail and other consumer targeted advertising. There is a 10p minimum bid level, plus a ’10 set-up fee and ’50 minimum deposit to start a campaign. Listings tend to be displayed with a small logo alongside and the top 10 listings tend to get good coverage on most first pages of the results shown. The disadvantages of Espotting are that campaign management is not particularly easy compared to some of the other PPC tools, and the reporting is limited, to the extent that search volumes and therefore clickthrough rates cannot be assessed.

Espotting was acquired by FindWhat in 2004, which is one of the largest PPC providers in the US, so we may find that this service becomes a larger player again in the future. It also has a reasonable European network covering Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Mirago

Mirago is the largest UK-only search engine that enables searches by region as well as nationally. It offers a PPC programme that will display ‘Featured Results’ above the search engine results on this search engine, plus it integrates these listings with a number of search partners, including DogPile, Copernic, The Local Web and UK Sprite.

There is a ’25 deposit to set up an account on Mirago and no minimum monthly spend. It offers an impressive array of account management tools, including the option to use ‘Day Parting’ – where you can limit your campaign to appear at certain times of the day, or days of the week, when potential customers are likely to be searching – and also Traffic Selection, where you can select only those sources that display your advert with a high ROI (return on investment).

Mirago also provides some detailed reporting tools, making this an impressive service that deserves wider coverage and usage in the UK market. It also offers similar national and regionally targeted search services in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and 6 other countries.

WebFinder

WebFinder was launched in 2003 by Thomson Local to provide an alternative PPC tool for national and regional advertisers. Their coverage of the UK market through a number of search partners has fluctuated since this time and the adverts are now displayed on supplementary pages on large portals like Wanadoo and Tiscali, or smaller search tools like StreetMap and Turbo10.

The minimum bid cost on this tool is 10p. There are a number of package options to set up an account, however the cheapest still charges a high ’49 ‘administration fee’ plus a minimum ’50 click deposit gives this tool a high initial start-up cost. Once active, the account management is quite straightforward and reporting tools provide some reasonable information, despite not being very intuitive!

WebFinder has recently deleted one of its partner sites due to excessive traffic volumes being reported, which is somewhat concerning but also reassuring that WebFinder is monitoring this activity and taking the appropriate action to combat possible fraud.

PPC advertising in other countries

We shall be reviewing this issue in more detail in a future issue of the newsletter, but if your business is targeting countries in Europe or worldwide, there is a network of PPC tools that can be used – most notably, Overture and Espotting provide some good networks of PPC advertising across Europe and also Google Ads (AdWords) can be activated to appear in selected countries worldwide.

Another consideration is to use Overture’s US tool to increase potential coverage of English-language searches worldwide. Some UK web users will use search tools that display adverts from this account, so it can be useful to extend your UK coverage with an additional account on this tool (and on Google Ads (AdWords)) although you do need to consider that you will also be generating traffic from US searchers as well, which may make a campaign uneconomic.

With all the PPC tools listed above, we would encourage you to test these whenever possible and ideally by tracking responses from each source to see if they can be cost-effective means of generating new business. If you would like to know more, or wish to set up a new PPC account on any of these tools, please contact us for more details.

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