So your thinking off using a second tier search engine to drive some extra traffic to your site at a cheaper rate and get more conversions right…well kind of but before you jump into it and start bidding on hundred or thousands of keywords lets take a step back and think about a few things.

What Exactly Does 2nd Tier Mean?
Well a 2nd tier PPC provider has a smaller market share and generally less well known, but that doesn’t mean that they wont be effective. The 2nd tier search engines and PPC platforms drive billions of searches a month. The cost can vary, but its not uncommon to find clicks for a portion of the price of the major three aka Google, Yahoo (Formerly Overture) and MSN.

What Should You Look For?
Well you should first know what your goals are and what you expect to get from the PPC campaign. You wont see quite the same results from these 2nd tier guys as you do the big ones so keep that in mind. Each one can tend to have a different type of user that makes up the majority of the market share of searches done on that platform. For example eZanga has a lot of promotional driven and contest hungry users between the age of 18-25. Now that only represents a portion of their user base, however it would seem to be the biggest share. Also think about click fraud since sometimes the smaller search engines don’t have a good fraud system in place. I would suggest that you implement test campaigns for your market and demographic in a couple of the engines first then see how well it performs before you jump right in and pump up the budget.

Who Are These 2nd Tier Providers?
Well there are getting to be more and more, but I will tell you about the ones that I know of and have dealt with personally.

ABC Search
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ABC Search offers click fraud and some pretty new data options for advertisers. Their site says they do over 2 billion searches a month. $25 dollar minimum deposit and a .05 cent minimum make them a good choice to compliment your PPC campaign with.

ASK.com

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Ask is at its core based on the Looksmart PPC platform. It has been upgraded and modified by Ask.com to have some different features from its peers. I might add that while there are several 2nd tier providers that utilize the Looksmart PPC platform, they don’t necessarily have the same traffic sources. Minimum bid is .05 cents and minimum deposit is $15.

Looksmart
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Looksmart boasts over 400 million searches per day in thier network. They provide the platform for several of the second tier search engines out there. LookSmart offers advertisers targeted, pay-per-click (PPC) search
advertising, contextual search advertising, and display banner
advertising via its Advertiser Networks; and an Ad Center platform for
customizable private-label advertiser solutions for online publishers. Looksmart has a minimum bid of .10 and a minimum deposit of $15.

E-Zanga
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eZanga was started in 2003 by Richard Kahn and Angel Pabon. They have click fraud technology they call Traffic Advisors. This system is also based off of the Looksmart PPC platform.
eZanga’s advertising system comprises two systems which allows for national “Big Pond” advertising and
local “Small Pond” advertising. eZanga has a minimum bid of .05 and a minimum deposit of $0.

7 Search
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7Search.com has been around since 1999 and currently has over 1.5 billion searches a month. Minimum bids of .01 and a minimum deposit of $25.

Final Thoughts
As always remember to track your conversions and ad spend and also think about your long term acquisition cost and if its working for you. Keep an eye out for click fraud or sign up for a click fraud service. Remember to test the waters with your campaign before you jump in with both feet. Also a last note if you have a publisher feed from a major provider such as Yahoo or Google, be cautious of your pages traffic quality score. This could take a hit from some of the traffic provided by smaller engines or 2nd tier PPC platforms. It all really depends on your business model. Many of the above vendors offer great sign up promotions so I would suggest taking a quick look around to see if you can find a sign up bonus coupon or code to get your account some free money.