As stated earlier, Overture offers advertisers two sign-up plans. These plans, Fast Track or Self Serve, give you the choice of expert assistance or starting out on your own. Fast Track charges an additional one-time service fee of $199 whereas Self Serve does not have any service fee. With Fast Track you get expert assistance from Overture specialists as well as Overture tools, whereas with Self Serve you pretty much do everything without any help.

When you sign up with Overture using the Fast Track Sign-up program, you will receive a customized proposal prepared by one of the Overture experts. When you receive your proposal, all you have to do is approve Overture’s choices to get your search listings online. You can also make changes in the proposal yourself. If you have a reasonable budget to spend then it may be useful to use this service, but remember that they are trying to make increased profits for Overture and so they will suggest that you bid for all of the most expensive terms. If you do not have a lot of money to spend it is probably not a worthwhile feature.

You do not receive a proposal when you sign up with Self Serve, and so you must determine all the keywords yourself. In order to keep your account active, you have to spend at least $20 a month. Apart from this, Overture also charges an initial non-refundable deposit of $50. These charges are mandatory for both service plans. The turnaround for approval of listings with Fast Track is around 3 days, whereas the turnaround for Self Serve is 5 days. Moreover, listings submitted through Self Serve are subject to strict editorial approval. Listings submitted through Fast Track may be easier to get approved.

The sign-up process for both plans is similar. However, with Fast Track you get a lot of assistance during every phase of the sign-up process. This includes Search Term Selection, assistance with Titles and Descriptions, Budget Management, and Account Optimization.

The first step is to select a target country. You can select more than one country for your listing. However, you will need to create a new account for every country, thus, multiplying your costs. The next few steps include entering your account information such as First Name, Last Name, Email Address, and Phone; your username and password; and your mailing address.

Once this is done, you need to select a payment plan. Overture offers three payment plans:

• Non Stop Traffic Plan - You select an amount and before 3 to 5 days of funds left, your account is automatically recharged.
• Fixed Budget Plan - Like Google AdWords, you specify a fixed monthly budget. If the amount is used up before the end of the month the listing is taken off.
• Pre-Payment Plan - You add an amount to your account whenever you feel like. For instance, if you select $50 initially and your account gets used up in 25 days, you need not recharge that day itself or even at the beginning of the next month. You can recharge whenever you want. However, the listing will not be displayed until you recharge your account.

The next step is to enter your URL. With Fast Track you are asked to enter your ideal monthly budget, your search term ideas, and information about specific focus areas of your site. Overture specialists will use this information to create the customized report. You are not offered these features with the Self Server plan.

The next steps include entering your credit card details and accepting Overture terms and conditions. This completes the sign-up process. Your account is activated once your payment is accepted.

You have created an Overture Account. The next phase involves the process of creating an ad listing on Overture. The advertising process can be described in 5 basic steps.

Step 1: Selecting a range of search terms or keywords relevant to your website.

Step 2: Writing a title and description lines for your listing. This is the actual content of your ad.

Step 3: Entering a bid amount for each of the search terms. The higher you bid, the higher your position. Unlike Google AdWords, Overture ranks your listing primarily on the basis of your bid amount. Overture listings are classified into two categories - Premium Listings, and Classic Listings. The top 3 positions are termed as Premium Listings, whereas positions 4 to 240 are Classic Listings. Ads that qualify for Premium Listings are displayed on all partner sites of Overture including Yahoo, Lycos, and MSN. Ads qualifying for Classic Listings are displayed in partner sites, however, this sites are not very popular.

Step 4: If you submit your listing through Self Serve, it is reviewed by Overture specialists for approval.

Step 5: Once the listing is approved, it is displayed in Overture and other partner sites.

This completes the process of activating an account with Overture, and designing and submitting the Ad.

Making sure that your ads get approved

Overture provides a number of guidelines for designing ads. Compliance with these guidelines is crucial for ensuring acceptance of the ad. Moreover, these guidelines are also aimed at improving your ad’s click-through rate and in turn, your ROI.

Relevance of Search Terms

Overture specialists have a look at your website before approving your listing. This is done in order to ascertain whether the search terms you provide are relevant to your business. For instance, if you have a website on Online Education, a keyword such as "Sex" is completely irrelevant. Your ad would be rejected if Overture determines irrelevancy of search terms.

Titles and Descriptions

Overture does not allow titles and descriptions that contain all capital letters. Generally, only the first letter should be capital. Besides, titles and descriptions containing hype and excessive use of symbols will be rejected.

The Landing Page

The landing page should be relevant to the Ad. Your ad may promote a specific product or service. In this case, the landing URL should be the page containing information about that product or service and not the homepage.

Generic Terms

As stated earlier, use specific and targeted keywords. Overture may reject the use of very generic keywords. Besides, this would hurt your sales as well.

Overture is a human-edited site. Once you submit your listing, you will get a response from Overture specialists with a list of terms that were approved and the ones which were not. Reasons for rejection are also given. You can always work on the listing and resubmit it.

A very interesting aspect of submitting ads to Overture is that listings rejected by one human specialist might not be rejected by some other specialist. There is no penalty for resubmitting terms and listings, if you feel they are relevant to your product or service. There have been many cases where rejected listings have been approved after a second review.