Is Origami better than UMPC?

We’ve been running an ad for JumpingMinds’ InkGestures through Google AdWords for about a week now and we’ve seen some interesting trends.

First some background. Although there aren’t any shipping UMPC devices, we thought it would be a good opportunity to place a Google ad under the UMPC phrases for a couple reasons:

* We want to spread the word that we’ve optimized InkGestures for the UMPC display. You can use InkGestures just like you can on a full Tablet PC.
* Exposure. A lot of people are searching for information on UMPCs right now, so it’s a good opportunity to reach a wide variety of people, letting them know about InkGestures. And some Tablet owners may not already be aware that InkGestures is available for Tablets since it’s so new.
* Not many ad competitors for UMPC terms–although this is changing rapidly. AdWords ads are bid based, so as more companies want to post ads under a term, the higher the price gets.
* I figured we’d get a lot of impressions (with the ad showing) and a small number of clicks since there aren’t any shipping UMPC products that people need software for at this point.
* We guessed that press and influential bloggers would be monitoring the term UMPC closely so if they would notice our ad, that would be great.

Now since there aren’t any shipping UMPC units I know there won’t be any conversions to sales for awhile. This was just a chance to get in early and get in when it’s less expensive. I expect ads under UMPC to get more and more expensive as more companies support and sell UMPCs.

In general, getting above the competitive noise is a challenge in AdWords. For instance, it’s expensive to get in the top links on the term “Tablet PC”. There are a lot of companies competing for it. When you’re selling a $49 product ($39 until March 31st), you don’t want to be spending $1/click if you don’t have to.

Now getting in early after Origami’s huge viral campaign has its drawbacks too. There are lots of people that are just looking. Since we have a new product and we want to spread the word, this exposure would be a good thing. It’s kind of like buying an ad in a tech magazine–although a lot less expensive. We’re looking to familiarize people with our product.

Counting impressions is one thing. Clicks are another. You pay for clicks in an AdWords campaign.

To keep the clicks manageable, I limited the ad campaign to a few dollars a day. At first just a couple dollars. It wasn’t but a short time and the first budget was spent. People were clicking. So I raised it. I had to raise it a couple times more that first day and I kept adjusting it for the next several days so it wouldn’t go out of control. People were clicking on the ad quite a bit. I’m guessing they were looking for any info they could get on UMPCs and were curious what software would run on one.

The UMPC traffic has died down a lot since the official announcement. Today is the largest drop. I’m guessing it’s about half of what it was a couple days ago. I can tell by the decrease in impressions. The clicks have gone down too.

However, what’s very interesting is that all along the term “Origami” has been outproducing clicks than the official term “UMPC.” I haven’t notice this trend changing either.

And since Microsoft even has the website www.origamiproject.com, I don’t expect this to change anytime soon. It’s almost like “Origami” is the official street name for UMPC. We’ll have to see how long this lasts. At least for now, if you have a UMPC product, be sure to include Origami in your AdWords list–you may experience what I’ve seen–that you’ll get more click throughs. (Actually, this may or may not be a good thing, depending on your product.)