Pay per click advertising is an innovative way for advertisers and webmasters, small business owners, and basically everyone on the internet to promote and generate interest in their projects online, with the use of custom made ads. Basically, it is a means of advertising on the internet, where the person who created the ad does not pay a specific set fee to put an ad on a web page, or in search results, more often than not, but instead, pays a certain amount of money each time a visitor or potential customer clicks on their ads, and is redirected to their website, or landing page.
How To Choose The Right Program Amongst Hundreds?
When first entering the PPC advertising market, a new potential advertiser must take several things into account. Most all these factors, are the willingness to take on high risks with an ad campaign, how much of a budget a new advertiser has, or is willing to set aside, for this particular type of advertising, and also, how much the advertiser prefers to be involved in managing the process of marketing their own product. Referral is always a great place to start; asking opinions of friends or acquaintances who use PPC advertising for their marketing needs, also, asking business associates, who have used or are using PPC campaigns, and someone who is knowledgeable in webmarketing, that is unbiased, asking them as well may generate some good advice. And most importantly, an advertiser, or potential advertiser should research as much as possible those companies that they have in mind to choose.
What Is PPC Fraud?
Pay per click fraud is an increasingly large problem for internet based businesses/ PPC fraud is basically when one person clicks repeatedly on an ad, without ever buying any products, or really being interested in a website, just for the sheer sake of clicking, or, if it is an advertiser clicking on their own ad to make money. People generally feel fairly helpless against this kind of abuse, since they’re paying for it dearly, but there are real solutions available for defense against PPC fraud. The first thing an advertiser must do, if suspicious, is always contacting their pay per click company to tell the support agents. Afterwards, the advertiser’s reports should be able to verify whether or not click fraud has been committed, by showing repeated IP addresses, and in some cases, there are thousands per day, from a single IP address. Unfortunately, click fraud is becoming more and more sophisticated, and alluding techniques to detect it more often; still, there are many options and security tools available to solve this problem and protect against it.
After Setting The Budget, Selecting Keywords, And Choosing The Right Network, What Is The Next Step?
Actually, more frequently than not, advertisers forget a very key step in beginning their ad campaigns, and usually do not remember to do it before registering and creating their account with their pay per click program. To be precise, the advertisers forget to look at, and modify, if necessary, the page that visitors will be arriving at when clicking the ad that the advertiser has placed. It’s a simple error, and made widely, by the majority of new advertisers, or even more experienced ones, on occasion. Advertisers need to be certain that their landing page is both user-friendly, and supports exactly what they’re trying to promote to the visitors to their site. Contrary to popular belief and practice, the advertiser’s landing page is not ideally just the homepage. Instead, it should be a page that is simple, and shows clearly understood information about the advertiser’s services, how they are superior, the types of products or services, how to purchase these, and et cetera.
After Changing A Bid Amount How Long Is It Before Changes In The Account Are Visible?
Regardless of what type of pay per click advertising company an advertiser may be using, the changes should always be fairly instantaneous. Mainly because the programs function in real-time, and use auto-bidding software in order to efficiently manage the advertisers’ bids. For instance, say an advertiser’s bid has put them in first position, whereas the bidder’s position was previously at fifth. The changes in the search engine should be seen fairly instantly. If for some reason, an advertiser cannot see this change after a short while, then they should contact support for their PPC company immediately, and ask if there is some sort of temporary issue being resolved. If this type of problem persists, then there should certainly be at least some consideration of a change in PPC program. That kind of problem is not an often occurrence, and is probably a scam.
Losing The Best Listing To A Higher Bidder
Many new advertisers, and occasionally seasoned ones as well, make the mistake of getting involved in “bid wars” with larger corporations. Bid wars are basically when a company with more money, comes along, and bids on a great keyword, that one advertiser, with a limited budget, had already chosen as their “best.” The battle rages on; the smaller company pours more and more money into one word, while the other advertiser consistently outbids them. This is fairly obvious as a bad idea to most, upon reflection, or an objective view, but for the smaller advertiser, it can be extremely frustrating. However, the solution is simple. For example, “the best keyword” is up to $10.00, but a bunch of other keywords, just as pertinent, can be set at a great position, for only $0.50. Doesn’t it make more sense to go with the lower priced keywords? The other keywords are as relevant, and advertisers should consider how many more keywords they will be adding to their campaign, by spending the same amount of money on the other words. The point is to spread marketing dollars around; focusing on one word can reduce ROI, and drain money out of an advertising campaign quickly.
Pay per click advertising is one of the fastest growing ways to advertise for your online company, blog, website, and just generally anything you can think of that a person could get paid to do online. There are many pay per click advertising programs existing today, of varying qualities and benefits. If you’re an advertiser, it can be hard deciding which one of these programs to use. The two most popular PPC advertising programs are currently Yahoo Search Marketing and Google AdWords. But just because the majority of people are using these two programs, doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to also. An advertiser should be able to shop around and decide what’s best for their company’s needs while at the same time finding a pay per click advertising program that is attractive and useful to them. Listed below are a couple of choices other than Yahoo Search Marketing and Google AdWords.
7Search
7Search was a small company had its headquarters originally in Chicago, Illinois problem, but eventually grew into something larger. And now is a continued supplier of comedy within the Internet. At one point in their company’s history, they decided to focus on the pay per click advertising market, using the slogan “the closest prospect to a buyer.” 7Search claimed to have over 400 million searches per month through affiliates and partners in the year 2004. What diverse via 7Search from the rest of the paper click advertising programs is that they concentrate on the business owner and advertiser who either does not want, or cannot afford to pay more than $.10 per click.
7Search has some great benefits and features. Just one of these features, is that they recently installed a new toolbar available for a download program, that is called “Predictive Search.” Predictive Search, uses reverse engineering in order to help the advertiser choose keywords that might be more productive than the ones that they are already using, in order for the advertiser to get better results from consumers. 7Search also gives advertisers via available option of using PayPal to fund their campaign, according to what is more convenient for the advertiser using the program. Unlike some other programs, 7Search also sends an e-mail alerting advertisers to when there is only another three days estimate worth of click money left in their account.
There are only a couple of negative aspects for advertisers using 7Search for their pay per click advertising program. For instance there is a $25 minimum deposit amount in order for them to open an account, but this is also a substantially low fee when compared to some of the other pay per click advertising programs. In fact, some programs charge up to $50 in order to open an account. 7Search is also only available in English-speaking countries, but this still makes it a widespread program for advertisers in the United States, many countries in Europe or in most of Canada. 7Search rose arms availability in order to detect and protect itself against click fraud.
Findology
Findology.com is a division of TrafficAds Media, Inc., an enormously through the year 2005, where it went from under one billion searches in one month, and by 2006 had grown to over 2 billion searches in a month. Findology.com partnered itself LookSmart, in 2004, in order to expand. Findology.com search engine is a fairly standard for their industry and the search engine itself has a clean look to it, much like Google in the efficiency of its appearance. Findology provides advertisers with “the most affordable bid rates at an even higher ROI.” This is because supposedly, there are search engines reach into traffic that others don’t have access to. Findology’s most important advantage is that its partnerships with a number of channels allow advertisers this access into the traffic that they would usually not be able to target.
Findology is a fairly popular, and well-known pay per click advertising program, and also has many benefits. They are known for being very user-friendly and especially intuitive with their advertisers and customers. They also provide a free instant messenger and link to people search with Reunion.com. Also it is the opinion of many users and advertisers that the portal is very attractive and integrates the search bar with very useful and pertinent information, without adding a lot of irrelevant “tips” and “suggestions.” Also for advertisers that are on a budget or don’t want to spend a large amount of money on their campaign right away, the minimum bids for Findology.com start at only three cents.
But just like with any other program, Findology.com’s paper click program has a couple negative factors. One of the unattractive qualities about the search results page is that sometimes there are duplicate listings in the results. For the consumers using the search engine in reviewing the search results, duplicate listings can seem very unprofessional, useless and take the search engine a lot less popular to consumers and visitors. Although in many aspects, Findology.com’s pay per click program is very unique in its own way, unfortunately there’s not really much difference in running a web search versus a shopping search, which is another not so great feature for both advertisers and consumers and visitors. Visitors and people using a search engine want clear, original results, that solve their queries, and a convenient and fast manner without it being necessary for the visitor to click on several results before they find what they’re looking for. Many companies should remember, that although they are our to make money and to make it even easier for advertisers on the Internet to make money as well, the consumer friendliness is above all, the most important factor of the industry. If people can’t find what they’re looking for, or find a relevant responses on the results page, then they will stop using that search engine. Customer service is the key to any business that has to do with customers at all, because without customers there would be no business.
When “shopping” for a pay per click network, an advertiser should be aware of what is popular, what companies aren’t, and which incorporate efficiency, speed, and a friendly, supportive environment for their advertisers, both experienced and new to the PPC advertising market. Although it is easy to choose a program based on it’s popularity, it’s also easy to choose a program just because it’s not. Certain types of PPC advertising networks are unpopular for good reasons, and others are simply too new to have enough advertisers and clients to correctly fill a user’s needs. It is always in the best interest of an advertiser to find a happy medium between the two extremes. Also, not to forget, that in every venture, there will be the pro’s and cons that people find in everyday life. Nothing is perfect, but with a lot of research, and a great attitude, an advertiser can find the next best thing.
Ask.com
Ask.com is formerly known as Ask Jeeves, and is a part of IAC Search & Media, which is in turn, part of the larger corporation, IAC/InterActive Corp. Their headquarters are in Oakland, California. Ask.com has great reviews, on most websites, dedicated to giving full ratings and factual advice on the latest, greatest, and heinous PPC advertisers out there, and the popularity of Ask grew quite a bit last year, and is still very popular this year; it is in fact, listed in the top ten PPC search engines on many sites. They approach the keyword bidding, and auction process a bit differently, and use something called “eCPM ranking,” which is a simple formula, though most find it confusing. eCPM is simply the cost per click, multiplied by the clickthrough rate; the advertiser’s ad will be ranked, relative to what amount other bidders are bidding on the same keywords. There is what is called, a “reserve price,” which is the minimum cost per click needed to guarantee an advertiser’s keyword will be ranked in first position, on the top of sponsored listings, shown in the search results. The reserve price is based on market intelligence, so claims Ask.com, and the CPC’s that are already there.
Ask.com PPC advertising program has some great features and benefits, but amongst those are the fact that as early as June 2005 it was already overlapping in users of only just over 20% with and Yahoo, and Google, which basically means that they’re providing original, and a great unique search engine for users. The terminology for the site is much the same as the other search engines out there, despite their different approach to bidding on keywords. Another great feature, provided by Ask.com is that the tool for bidding on keywords, allows the advertiser to view the top five competitors for the keyword the advertiser might be interested; that way, they can make note of any “bid wars” going on, and can steer clear of getting involved in that money losing process.
Although the pay per click advertising program offered by Ask.com is both popular, and efficient, users are slightly concerned over how their bidding on keywords process works. The auction model is simple, but many advertisers find it complex, and confusing, because it simply is not the formula that other programs use. The bid amount for most PPC advertising programs, is based on CPC, whereas the formula used on Ask, is CPC multiplied by CTR, instead of the conventional method. Also, the minimum bid price, is only five cents, that is true; but although the reserve price is great for some bidders, it can make things more difficult for others, if there is one placed on a keyword they were planning to use.
Microsoft AdCenter
Microsoft AdCenter is fairly new; it debuted only last year in May, for the United States, and were reportedly still experimenting on the functions and features available within the site, opening up new options slowly for advertisers, in late 2006. But last year, contextual advertising was still by invitation-only. Microsoft AdCenter refers to their ads as, “P4P” instead of PPC; they call them, “pay for performance” ads. Their PPC option is offered for the Live Search property, whose audience is identified mainly as “[on average] 45 years old, skews female, married, and 45 percent have children. They also earn high incomes (Avg. HHI $76.1K), and are well-educated, professionals–with an additional 4 percent being full-time students.”
One the great benefits of using AdCenter is that potential advertisers can get access to a demographic, and information, on the millions of users that use MSN products, and services, or have registers for the MSN.net Passport account. The reason for this, is that if advertisers can see their potential audience, they’ll be much more confident in beginning a campaign with AdCenter, not only based on sheer amount of users with the passport; but users who actually buy products from Microsoft are also excellent for a new advertiser.
There are some negative aspects, as well, with Microsoft AdCenter, for instance, although this really isn’t so bad, that they do provide a Quicklaunch program, which is a tool for helping advertisers create their ads, and start their campaigns; however, the advertiser must spend at least $30 a day. That kind of feature, as nice as it is, however, is entirely too expensive for new advertisers on a budget, and is slightly unrealistic. Also, there is a tool to regulate and set how much an advertiser can spend in a month, there is no tool available, and no way to set a daily spend limit. Besides that, ads that have higher, or the highest click-through rates, may supplant other advertiser’s ads. However, these are reports made late in last year and may have been changed, simplified; also, new tools may have been added to their program is well. The best thing an advertiser can do is look around their site, and ask others who have used it, how the AdCenter program worked for them.
- Ads with a larger CTR can supplant existing ads.
