Pay-per-click advertising

The Internet offers myriad ways to reach new audiences more efficiently and cheaper than traditional (print and media) advertising. These days, one of the most effective marketing techniques which marketers are taking notice of is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

1 How PPC advertising works
2 PPC programs
3 External links
- 3.1 Search engine resources
- 3.2 Tools
4 See also

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How PPC advertising works

Pay-per-click offers a way for companies to reach potential customers who are already looking for what you are selling or offering, through major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and/or MSN. After creating a self-serve advertising account with these search engines, you simply bid on keywords that people would search for to find your products, such as “affordable business hosting,” “windows web host,” or “website hosting.” Your ads will appear on the search results pages, alongside regular listings.

You don’t pay anything until visitors actually click on your ad to access your website. Since they are already searching for your products and are interested in the offer you made in your ad, this makes for a highly effective and well-converting advertising outlet. The cost per click works in an auction style. The more you bid per visitor, the higher in the sponsored listings your ad will appear, and the more visitors you likely will receive.

PPC ads are typically located in boxes titled “sponsored links” or “advertiser links,” which are present on an increasing number of websites. By listing your site on PPC search engines, your ads are then automatically syndicated and published on other websites pertaining to your industry. This opens up several new audiences, including even more customer prospects and resale channels. In fact, most search engines offer partner programs allowing smaller, niche websites to display your ads for a portion of your budget. This way, with your permission, even smaller, more niche content sites will publish your ads on their websites. Advertisers, of course, have the option to "turn off" syndicated listings if they do not want their ads appearing on smaller sites.

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PPC programs

Currently, there are three major pay-per-click players: Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Google leads the way with a PPC program called AdWords, while Yahoo! owns the Overture competitive search engine (recently re-branded as Yahoo! Search Marketing), and Microsoft recently launched their own adCenter. They are considered to be the leaders in the industry and are responsible for over 80% of all Internet traffic at this time. Your ads will not only appear on their search results pages, but will be syndicated among hundreds of major distributors, portals, and content sites.

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