Pay per click advertising is usually referred to as PPC within the world of Internet marketing and advertising. PPC advertising means that you or your business (the advertiser) will pay a fee every time someone clicks on an ad that you have placed online.
PPC advertising is a results-driven and targeted effort ad campaign that drives traffic to your website by paying for that traffic (rather than gaining the visits organically through search engine queries). Google AdWords, display ads and retargeting are all popular and powerful forms of PPC.
AdWords
AdWords is Google’s online advertising service. It allows you to purchase targeted ads that you pay for only when someone clicks on your ad. When you utilize Google’s AdWords as part of a PPC campaign, you can bid for ad placement on Google’s search engines and websites, as well as on the websites of their partners who provide Google services.
Because research continues to demonstrate that nearly 90 percent of people performing web searches do not click beyond the first page of search engine results, search engine advertising remains the most dominant form of PPC. Having your business or organization appear on the first page of a Google search nearly guarantees traffic to your website. When it comes to Adwords, if traffic is not driven to your site despite your ad placement, you do not pay for it. This allows you to greatly reduce your risk of spending advertising dollars without gaining any positive outcomes.
AdWords lets you set a budget and bid for an ad placement within Google’s search engine. Your ad appears when users search for key phrases or search terms that are related to your business or service and appear as a result listed as a “Sponsored Link”.
The ads are usually comprised of a title and a short description of the service or product that you are advertising. Although the ad may appear on the first page of search engine results, you have the option of only paying for the ad if someone clicks on it, thereby being directed to your website.
Creating a PPC campaign with AdWords is fairly simple to do. However, many businesses utilize Google AdWord Management to most effectively target their market and drive traffic to their website that is most likely to result in a sale or completion of a call to action. While spending money with AdWords will certainly lead to more website traffic, the ultimate goal of that traffic is to gain sales. That is why targeted ads are critical to a successful PPC and AdWords campaign.
Display Ads
Display Advertising is a popular component within AdWords. Display advertising is often utilized as part of a PPC campaign and includes using banner ads, video ads, multi-media advertisements, audio clips and much more to make your ad appear more prominently than a typical AdWords link. You can set your budget for your display ads and create the advertisements that you wouldd like to see displayed.
Display ads allow you to target your audience using a variety of targeted marketing efforts, including demographic targeting, interest targeting, topic targeting, automatic placement or managed placement.
Automatic placements allow Google to decide where your display ad will be promoted. Typically, you will want to utilize some sort of targeted market information in order to optimize the results of where your ads will be shown. Managed placement (also known as contextual marketing or targeting) gives the advertiser complete control of where their display ads will be placed on the Internet by allowing them to specifically state which websites they would like the ads to appear on.
Demographic targeting allows the advertiser to set specific statistical information about whom their display ads are shown to. For example, an advertiser may offer a service or product specifically designed for men in their 40s or for women in their 20s. Demographic targeting assures that your display ad will be shown to that particular audience and is most optimally used in conjunction with keyword targeting.
Topic targeting uses keywords to have your banner ad, video, audio or multi-media ad displayed when searchers are looking for a specific topic or term, while interest targeting focuses on the interests of the searcher, not necessarily the topic that they are looking for.
Display ads can offer a powerful boost to any PPC campaign, but they also have been cited for their drawbacks, the largest of which is that they are known to irritate the user. Examples of display ads that might deliver negative results are ads that automatically begin playing upon a search, rather than letting the user select the ad or link.
Retargeting
Retargeting allows an advertiser to continue to interact with potential customers after that person has visited their website and left. Retargeting is a popular PPC tool because it is a generally accepted fact that roughly 2 percent of first-time website visits result in sales or the completion of a call to action. Retargeting allows businesses to stay connected to users that did not initially utilize their service or purchase their product.
Retargeting varies from other forms of PPC campaigns in that it only targets users that have already visited your businesses website. This allows businesses to funnel or drill down the retargeting strategy to specific parameters, including detailed data based upon users that went to a specific page or product on the company website. Retargeting allows you to spend advertising dollars only on potential customers that have clicked onto your website, versus regular display ads or PPC ads where you spend money on people that click on your site for the first time.
Retargeting is optimally used with AdWords as part of a larger marketing effort, including targeted topic ads. Retargeting drives traffic to your website largely as a conversion optimization tool, with optimal results seen when used as a component of a detailed PPC campaign.
Retargeting is the placement of a Javascript code (also known as a pixel) on your website that is not detectable by your visitors. The code is extremely small and does not interfere with the functionality or responsiveness of your website. After someone visits your website, the pixel anonymously adds a cookie to the browser of the user. This cookie tells the code, or pixel, to track your audience as they continue to navigate the Internet. When users are surfing the web later, the retargeting provider is prompted to deliver your ad only to people that previously visited your site. Like other PPC campaigns, you can exert quite a bit of control over where your ad is seen by selecting which sites you would like your ad to be displayed on.
