DISCOURAGING YAHOO/OVERTURE BIDDERS 

Here's an interesting little item. I don't know how practical 
it is, but I think it's worth a look.

There are several people who constantly pour over their 
Overture bids, optimizing here, experimenting there, and 
maximizing ROI whenever possible.

But most of us - those who have lives - usually just wait for 
the monthly activity report from Overture to analyze our bids, 
and to re-think our strategy. It's usually at this point when 
I make the decision to raise or lower a bid, and it's that 
tendency that inspired this idea...

The submitter of this idea first suggests doing research to 
find out when the Overture monthly report data is compiled. 
To do this, he begins changing his bids on various keywords 
(every 8 hours) a few days before the Overture monthly report 
is due. He makes a notation of the time and date of each bid 
change.

When the monthly report finally arrives, he checks the 
information in the report to see which bids are identified in 
the report, and uses this data to find out exactly (well, 
within 8 hours) of when the data was compiled.

Now that he knows this, he can raise his maximum bids to a 
very high level JUST BEFORE the next monthly report is 
compiled. Whatever clicks he gets will cost him more, but he 
only has to do this until the report data is collected, which 
he knows within an 8-hour window. After that point, he can 
return his bids to normal.

What's the point of all this?

Okay, let's say he and I are bidding on the same keyword. 
I'm bidding $0.25 a click and he's bidding $0.26 a click.
He's #1 and I'm #2. Since I know that the #1 position on 
Overture gets a lot more clicks, I might be tempted to bid 
$0.27 to be in the top position. But then, he'd bid $0.28, 
thus starting a bidding war. Before you know it, we'd both 
be paying A LOT MORE MONEY per click, yet we'd have the same 
relative position we had before.

But what if, when my monthly activity report arrives in my 
inbox, I see that I'm #2 at $0.25 but the #1 bidder has a 
maximum bid of $3.50?? I don't even have the slightest 
temptation to adjust my bid at this point because I'd have 
to bid $3.51 per click! So I would leave my bid right where 
it is.

And of course, as soon as the monthly reports are sent out, 
he goes to Overture and reduces his bid back to $0.26.

As I said, it's an interesting concept, and one that may 
even prove to be practical with high-price-per-click 
keywords. 

Of course, Overture would hate this! :-)