PPC Comes Through In Holiday Shopping Crunch

This year, my husband and I decided to go simple on holiday gifts. The plan was to get a Nintendo Wii, plus a couple games, for the immediate family for Christmas - and that's it. Great plan, that is, until we realized just how popular the Wii is this year. My husband went to three stores last night (in the course of shopping for other extended-family gifts) and came home with Rock Band II, but no Wii.

I said, no problem, I'll just check Amazon - I'm sure they'll have it. Ha. Well, they do - but only via third-party vendors, who seem to be in a bidding war for Amazon customers. Prices were at least $100 more than advertised in-store prices. Sorry, no go.

Enter PPC. Determined not to end up a Scrooge, I went to Google and searched for "nintendo wii." Jackpot! Of course, there were ads from the shopping search engines and eBay, but I bypassed those for Walmart's ad. I'm not normally a Walmart shopper - I have issues with some of their business practices - but amongst all the PPC ads on the page, they were the most trustworthy of the bunch. And they had the Wii in stock, at the same price I saw in all the sale flyers, ready to ship by Christmas.

This is one instance where PPC fits the bill much better than SEO. Nintendo topped the organic results for "nintendo wii," complete with sitelinks and such. Which they should, no argument there. But I want to *buy* the Wii, not learn about it from the manufacturer. PPC, with its on-target messaging, hit the spot here.

I know this isn't a big surprise to anyone, but it's just fun to be able to find what I'm looking for without ever leaving the house, thanks to PPC.