The PPC space is dominated by Google (Adwords), Microsoft (AdCenter), Yahoo (YSM) and to a lesser degree Ask Sponsored Listings. Beyond those there are dozens of much smaller search engines and PPC ad networks, like Findology, ABCSearch and 7Search. You may have come across their offers of free advertising to get you started. Are they worth trying?

Here are 6 reasons why they might be a waste of your time, creating a negative ROE (Return on Effort):

Size

If you used every 2nd/3rd tier PPC service, at best they could only reach the last 5% of search queries that are not made via the Big 4.

Click Fraud

Simply put, the bigger services have bigger and better fraud detection tools.

Quality of Service

The Big 4 are continually innovating, trying to be the best. The rest most probably cannot afford to improve their services much. They are less likely to come up with features like dayparting, geolocating, or demographic serving.

CTR and Quality Scores

Most of the smaller PPC services are very basic in the way they rank ads - what you bid is what you get. Experienced search marketers know how to translate their skills into lower costs per click, because services like AdWords reward quality ads and destinations. This makes the Big 4 relatively less expensive per click for us.

Support

Not only do the Big 4 have quality support (although we still wish Google would provide support on weekends!), they also get discussed on major forums like WebMasterWorld. If you’d like unofficial help from your fellow marketers, stick with the Big 4.

Effort

To manage many PPC services, you either need a lot of time on your hands (which means you are doing something wrong!) or you use a 3rd party bid management service (won’t be free). Either way you are going to spend a lot more time and money managing the the small services that marginally increase your traffic

Bottom Line

Start with Google. If all is going well (good ROI, comfortable with doing it yourself), give MSN and Yahoo a go, and following them Ask. If you still feel you are getting a good ROI and ROE, venture into the 2nd/3rd tier services. In our experience it is not worth the effort going beyond the Big 4.