Who are you playing against in the game of paid search advertising?

There are at least three candidates:

• Other Advertisers – It seems this is how most people think about it. You’re trying to get qualified traffic and so are ‘they’. You have to pick the right keywords, write compelling creative, and set the bids that get the clicks so they don’t.
• The Search Engines – These are the guys taking your money, deciding how much to charge you and where/when your ad runs. Their paid search algorithms are enabling you but also defining/limiting your success.
• Your Own Self - The reality for most campaigns is that limitations of expertise or resources (time, money, or technology) is what’s really holding them back. Neither engines or other advertisers matter when you’re overbidding for poorly chosen keywords with lousy creative and irrelevant landing pages.

The truth is that you have to consider and take actions based on each of these. The intensity of trouble you’re getting from any one of them probably depends a lot upon the status and stage of your campaigns, as well as the industry segment you’re in and your goals.

Interestingly I think that other advertisers are only a primary issue in very few cases. Across all of the campaigns we manage now or in the past, I can’t think of too many situations where competitors – other than the basic economics of the keyword cost to get on the first page to begin win – has been too much of an issue. Especially compared with getting the campaign configuration right, getting the necessary work on to provide appropriate landing pages, and dealing with the ways the engines and their rules impact nearly everything.