S S.

I have to join with the others who were woefully disappointed and wished they could cancel their contract. When you enroll in their program, you must sign a 3-month contract. If their performance is poor, they will NOT let you out early.

When I talked to their sales rep, I liked the concept: their computer algorithm will optimize the bid position and amount and even search engine for your internet cost per click advertising. I understood that Yodle would mark up each click, but the rep assured me that the efficiency of their system would still result in cost savings. When I was talking to the sales rep, I asked what the mark-up was, but he said it was too complicated to figure out. That should have been a warning. I was thinking they would charge a 10 to 20% mark-up, not a 400% to 500% markup.

In my case, I started with $1,000 per month, which was about 1/5 my normal budget. Because Yodle was to supplant my own AdWords, Yahoo and MSN efforts, I felt a little nervous about underfunding the program and so voluntarily increased the first month's budget to $3,000. My average cost per click went from $0.81 when I managed it myself, to about $4.00 under Yodle. I then lowered my commitment to the contractually required $1,000 my second month. The second month saw minimal improvement in efficiency, to about $3.75.

I tried to cancel but they would not let me out. They said they had the 3-month contract so that their algorithm had an opportunity to optimize the ideal position and search engine. I retorted that I had already spent $4,000, which was $1,000 more than the contract called for, and that their computer should learn by the number of clicks rather than by time, but to no avail.

The one nice thing I can say is that the advertising rep (different from the sales rep) with whom I worked was very nice and did try her best to get results. However, the results were just atrocious. I learned, to my dismay, just how many of my existing customers look up my contact information through cost per click... at $4 per call, this was quite annoying. And like the others in this review, I got calls from those trying to sell me things and those looking for a job.

All in all, Yodle was a very poor business choice for me and I cannot recommend them to anyone.