On the Internet right now there are over 500 smaller and less known PPC advertising programs operating, and serving advertisers quite well. Small business owners, and webmasters are appreciative of the smaller programs because they provide lower costs in advertising for their products, services, and websites, than the competition of the larger PPC advertising programs. Many of these smaller companies have great reviews from different sources throughout the Internet, are popular, have great usability, and excellent features, as well as many other factors. Small business owners, and others are encouraged to shop around for a pay per click program that is right for them. Instead of automatically choosing the most popular; because this can be more costly, and can eat up a budget faster than it can make them money, in the long run.
ePilot
EPilot debuted in 1999 as the search engine arm of Interchange Corporation of Laguna Hills, California and has since made quite an impression on the pay per click advertising market. EPilot is centered around a very user friendly interface that is easy to use and manage for its customers and advertisers. EPilot has also managed to gain partnerships from numerous other PPC advertising programs such as LookSmart, FindWhat, 24/7 Real Media, and Enhance Interactive. These companies it was able to expand in a very short time. And ePilot still may be expanding today, as more and more search engine channels emerge and are used by developing pay per click advertising programs. Back in 2003 it had already added numerous others such as Ask Jeeves, Business.com, and Search123, and was already able to completely remodel their website.
Some of the great things about ePilot is that for one it has a very professional look and atmosphere. The Interchange Corporation has invested a lot of funding in ePilot, when one considers the size of the company within the pay per click advertising market. But they have paid particular attention to how it enters the local search market with its new feature called, Local Direct search, which is also an advertising platform. Local Direct for sure is the advertiser that there will be an extremely quick search result, which is also great for the visitor making the search, and uses what is called “Keyword DNA.” This feature uses language in search results that the average user is familiar with and can identify with more easily. EPilot had a partnership with 290 different search engines and websites in 2006. This included large properties, and over 300,000 advertisers for a very large market reach; and this number may have grown by now. They also employ a very thorough screening of relevancy factors, when they’re taking on new ad campaigns.
The negative aspects of ePilot are that, for example, the Local Direct feature actually only includes local results from within the United States and excludes results from that of other countries. Also there is a minimum bid price of seven cents, but all things considered, this is still a very low price and should be taken into account. Also, although it can be used towards the advertiser’s ad campaign, all advertisers are required to make a $100 minimum credit card deposit for quick activation. This for some is still a very large commitment especially for small businesses, and advertisers that are on a budget. The support service for ePilot is also only open and available Monday through Friday during business hours, for anyone who may need live contact with an agent of ePilot for some kind of assistance.
AdOn Network
Founded in 1999 AdOn Network, was formally called myGeek, until it evolved into a shopping site. After it dropped the majority of the shopping model within nearly a year, it began spending the next two years helping other smaller websites, visitors, and general users with search engine optimization. MyGeek was based in Phoenix, Arizona before it changed its name to AdOn Network in August of 2006. The company changed its name because of the confusion, spanning between their company online, and the name of the popular computer repair company “Geeks.” There were a lot of benefits about the confusing circumstances around the name issue with their company, versus the other company, but there were more than enough negative aspects of the confusion, which were the cause of the name change. There are many advertising options with the AdOn Network pay per click program, such as “pop under” ads that makes keyword targeting with the cost per thousand or CPM view, that display the advertiser’s website and not just an ad. Another option is text-based display that is keyword targeted and also sold on a cost per view basis in a bid format. There are also search listing ads that fit into the basic pay per click model, and they start at only five cents per click.
There are also many other great aspects of AdOn Network, such as the Max Bid feature, which allows an advertiser to set the cost per click amount according to what they were willing to pay for keywords instead of a default balance that is set by the program. Afterwards the prices are adjusted by auto-settings down to the pricing that is set by other advertisers. This is a somewhat questionable feature, but although one advertiser might not have access to the keyword bids, they can always remove their ad from an affiliated network depending on whether or not they were satisfied with the traffic received to their ads on that partnering search engine or website. The advertisers using AdOn Network also have the option to block a maximum of eight websites from seeing their ads, and AdOn also protects against and detects click fraud. There is also what is called a day parting feature, which is offered in search listings to help the advertiser to select specific times of the day to run their target ads, for instance, a late-night browser depending if their product is aimed at that target. There is also very in depth reporting in order to help advertisers analyze their traffic in their cost per keyword. This helps ensure the advertisers that they’ll get the correct targeting, and also AdOn Advertiser Services representatives will assist advertisers in maintaining their campaign accounts to their best needs.
One of the less reputable factors about AdOn Network is that they do allow adult sites to campaign advertisements through their program. However these ads are monitored to ensure that they are only using adult oriented keywords, and are targeting the right audience. Another somewhat negative factor is that the advertiser cannot directly view the keyword bidding but as a productive alternative they are in courage to observe and estimate their own traffic to determine the factor in what to bid for keywords. Unfortunately AdOn network also has very limited geo-targeting. Keywords the deal with location can only be used by advertisers when their websites contain a decent amount of content that is relevant to the particular location.
Despite popular belief, some of the lesser-known pay per click advertising networks can be better suited to your needs, then a more popular pay per click advertising company. Many times most aren’t even lesser-known they’re just overlooked, because programs such as Google AdWords, or Yahoo Search Marketing can have such overwhelming advertisements online, for their programs. When everybody else promises to be better it easy to overlook programs that actually are because their advertisements might be smaller or not as popular. There are pros and cons to each and every pay per click advertising network, and many people are under the assumption that because an ad program might not be well known that the ads distributed by the program aren’t going to be clicked because they don’t show up in enough websites. This is actually incorrect; many of the so-called “less popular” pay per click advertising networks have extensive and quite a large amount of contacts and websites where they show ads created by people using their service. And in many cases, some of their ads are more well circulated among optimum sites that the advertiser chooses for their ads to show up on. The pay per click advertising companies listed below are prime examples of overlooked, and great service.
MIVA
MIVA is a completely independent online advertising program, and has established business relationships with over 100,000 different companies. Their pay per click program is called MIVA Media, and was formed during the merger of FindWhat.com. In the United States and in Europe was formed with Espotting.com. MIVA a media currently operates on three major continents, North America, Asia, and Europe. Instead of just being a search destination in and of itself, MIVA is basically a network of all of its partner websites and portals to distribute the paying consumer advertisers’ ads. These ads are distributed through thousands of partner websites and loosely affiliated businesses; usually circulated amongst web publishers and industry-specific websites.
The positive aspects and benefits of MIVA media are, for one thing, that it appeals to smaller businesses that aren’t quite ready to get involved with large budget advertising campaigns with Google or Yahoo. It incorporates what is called the “BidOptimizer” tool that allows advertisers to bid for the specified ranking, instead of first ranking, which is usually more expensive. This implements the ability to allow advertisers to adjust their bids in order to keep their keywords in the second or third rank depending on whichever they have chosen. Another great benefit of this company is that it offers the integration of being able to advertise in both the United States and Europe. There is also a pay per call option that lets advertisers without websites target online shoppers. Also, the keyword generator tool allows advertisers to see how their keywords are doing all over the MIVA network.
But just like anywhere else this company has some negative aspects as well. There are incidents, some users have been indicated that advertisers should pay attention to whether or not MIVA’s network has appropriately covered their vertical market, or risk low ROI from non-targeted markets. There were also low revenues from the European district of the company, which was formerly Espotting.com, in mid-2006.
Enhance Interactive
Enhance interactive was originally founded in 1999 as ah-ha.com and was owned by the eFamily of Provo, Utah and was basically concentrated around a family centered and family-friendly approach to its listings and customers. In 2003 it became a subsidiary wholly owned by Marchex Inc., who also happens to own GoClick as well. As of September 2006 they had both been able to remain separate, corporately speaking. But many believe the merging plans are going to be a near future development, although this does remain to be seen.
There are many benefits to using Enhance Interactive. Customer service is an incredibly large factor within the network of Enhance Interactive. Right now, this is pay per click advertising program includes live chat support for all its customers and advertisers. Enhance Interactive believes in strong contact between advertisers and the account managers, and they prefer to keep it regular and ongoing. So usually an advertiser is able to find someone able to assist them who is already familiar with his or her account. They also include a program called LogoLinks that is provided free for the first month of that advertiser’s service with the company. This service is available for $9.95 after the first month. What LogoLinks does is place a small logo next to your ad in order to personalize it and it’s also not found in any other properties, and usually not of the same size. Another service offered by Enhance Interactive, is called the AccuMatch system. AccuMatch expands the keywords that advertiser will use in their ads, to include popular misspellings, plurals, and of course, most importantly simple phrases of key words. There is also a very low average of cost per click, or CPC. In fact, it starts at three cents, and there is plenty of emphasis on ROI.
And of course there are negative properties of Enhance Interactive as well. There is a $50 minimum deposit required, however, an advertiser can apply this fund towards their future clicks purchase. As odd as this may seem, also abbreviations are discouraged, even for such things as the abbreviations of states, and the ad titles are also limited to 40 characters. It is also necessary for the users and advertisers are careful to set up “daily cap.” This needs to be set at a realistic level, and advertisers should keep a vigilant eye on funding being is that Enhance Interactive removes the advertiser’s ad automatically once the cap is reached. Also, probably most inconveniently is the search results sometimes show advertisers that have their relevant content. When search queries are made, the highest PPC bidders will be showing the first on the results page, and then the organic results will be listed. When their relevant paid results show up in a search query on the results page, people will eventually stop using that search engine. For example, a search will be made for a soap opera website and ads will come up for a plasma TV first.
One of the hottest trends in online marketing right now is paid search or Pay per Click Advertising, and some say that this trend is only going to rise in popularity. One expert says that sales in pay per click advertising, which are currently over $14 billion in the US this year, and are expected to rise at 37% each year.
Right now Google is the leading choice among advertisers, with its innovative program and service called Adwords; and this primary service is only increasing in its numbers of paying advertisers, both new and experienced in the pay per click market. The traditional media market, such as televised commercials, are losing their market share, as the money shifts over to online marketing, but more specifically to the pay per click area. With this enormous amount of money invading the paid space, advertisers who aren’t careful, can make mistakes that can cause thousand dollar errors.
PPC advertising is simple, and because it is so simple advertisers enjoy it more because they have better control over their ad campaign and receive more feedback on its performance. PPC advertising is an important method for them to use, and master because of its growing importance and because of the trend in online marketing. It’s not so terribly uncommon that company owners will do their own PPC advertising campaigns.
If you aren’t already using pay per click ad campaigns, it’s becoming more and more important to understand pay per click advertising and have a plan of action to make pay per click advertising work for you. When running a large campaign, an advertiser needs to be carefully managing what they’re doing, and have a planned strategy for their ad campaign. Although the process looks fairly simple, it’s a fairly easy process to waste thousands of dollars. What makes the pay per click advertising so great is how fast you can reach your targeted market, and a good quality of sales opportunities that are constantly produced. But at $5-$10 per click, an advertiser can easily go over their ad budget.
Out of all the pay per click advertising programs, the two best programs in known for having the greatest market reach, are from Google and Yahoo. The program from Google called AdWords, delivers targeted ads with its own search engine, websites and a variety of different partner sites. Yahoo, which is the other very popular pay per click ad program, purchased Overture Search in 2003, and renamed it Yahoo Search Marketing. This program has a selection of specific pay per click advertising programs. These more popular pay per click advertising programs offer an excellently high reach, to the targeted visitors. Instead of organic search engine results, pay per click listings don’t need the complicated content development or the link building campaign.
The most important thing to efficient pay per click advertising campaigns has to do with how meticulously planned your keyword strategy is and whether or not you have quality visitor analysis. Several companies manage their pay per click advertising campaign was kind of sloppily. Campaigns have to be well organized so that didn’t keywords can be gotten rid of, and the good keywords improved.
Once in a while an advertiser won’t be able to bid on a particular keyword phrase, or phrases because their ad’s click through rate wasn’t so great. This is a problem an inexperienced, or new, or even a more experienced advertiser will definitely want to avoid, but might have already encountered. A visitor or consumer associates popular keywords with popular solutions or particular solutions; before they even set out to find a solution, they already have a vague idea of what they’re looking for. An advertiser is basically competing with other companies that offer a more popular solution, so even though an advertiser’s ad might show a particular search phrase, it might not be what people are looking for. This means that your click through rate will be extremely low in your ad is going to stop being shown. The way an advertiser’s ad looks isn’t necessarily a certainty, if you’re trying to sell a specialized product underneath a pretty general search term. An advertiser will need a well thought out, strategized plan for their keywords and ads.
In order for your PPC advertising campaign to work at its best, an advertiser must bid on the correct types of keyword phrases, they need to write ads that hook the consumers, and have a page that is well written, in order to get more targeted consumers to click through. Knowing how to attract potential visitor or consumer is half the battle and an advertiser will, nine times out of ten, be rewarded with better sales rates. When the amount of words, style and type, are restricted an advertiser would want to make sure that they have well written ads, but are attractive and persuasive to the reader, but this is a task that will always be easier said than done.
Another great tip towards pay per click advertising, is relaying to advertisers what kind of ad campaigns are the best, and despite what is sometimes advertised, the best kinds of campaigns, and the best way to approach paper click advertising, are usually the kind that are custom prepared by an SEO professional. A large corporation, using this technique of preparing their ad campaign, can save great amounts of money, time, energy, frustration, and basically just save in general, not to mention maximize their performance by way of outsourcing to an SEO consultant.
Pay per click advertising is a great way to run an ad campaign and to get your site, or your products, quality attention from consumers. But also pay per click advertising is about how relevant your ads are to the product, especially with Google AdWords. The simple truth of the matter is, that when marketing with pay per click advertisement campaigns, if an advertiser’s ads don’t get clicked on, they will not be displayed.
