subject: Get What You Pay For - The Beauty of Pay-Per-Click Advertising [print this page] Get What You Pay For - The Beauty of Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Today you can advertise a product in more ways than ever before. In addition to traditional mediums like print and broadcast, there's a slew of interactive options that allow advertisers tremendous insight into the actual results being generated by an ad. From iPhone applications to display ads, there are many different ways to get your product in front of a very engaged audience, and each has its own pros and cons. One of the most popular and effective options available today is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
As you may have guessed from the name, pay-per-click is advertising in which the advertiser only pays when a consumer clicks on their ad. Typically these ads are associated with search engines, however many other web sites have introduced pay-per-click models into their own advertising units.
The reason for the popularity of this type of advertising is quite simple; after years of buying ad space based on how many people MIGHT see an ad, you can now only pay for instances in which someone truly takes an action. The idea of paying for potential has been replaced by paying only for real results.
While the pay only for performance element cannot be downplayed in terms of its importance, there are many other factors that make it popular as well. We'll discuss factors specific to search engines as that is where PPC ads are most commonly used. One great asset of PPC ads is that they offer very transparent reporting. Depending on the platform being used to measure ad success, advertisers can tell what term a consumer was searching for that led to a click, how much the click on the ad cost (most pay-per-click programs are sold on an auction basis), and even whether the click turned into a lead or a sale. And this reporting is available in near-real time (typically there's a delay of a couple of hours).
Another advantage is that these ads will only be served to people who have an interest in your business offering. You can set these ads to show up only when consumers search for specific keyword phrases on search engines. So for example if you sell used cars, you could set up a campaign that will only show ads to people who are looking for terms like "used cars" or even specific models. You can also impart some demographic and geographic parameters on your ads. So if you only want to serve up your ads to women in Dallas Texas, you can do that.
Think of what a vast difference that is as opposed to say, taking out an ad in your local paper. Those ads are sold by total circulation, so you're paying by the number of eyeballs that may (or may not) see your ad. There's no guarantee that all of those readers have any interest in the product you sell. And in terms of tracking the results of the ad, unless you include a coupon or discount code that is unique to the ad, you will not gain much insight.
So to recap, you have the choice to put your advertising dollars into a medium that does not offer any guarantee of a consumer paying attention to your ad, and one that may not even be viewed by anyone interested in your business. Or, you can put your dollars toward a solution that guarantees that you will only pay for actual visitors to your web site, and that those visitors all have expressed some sort of interest in your goods or service. Which one would you choose?
The future of pay-per-click advertising is very exciting. In addition to the ability to target consumers based on their geographic location and their demographic profile, companies are introducing ways to target consumers based on their online behaviors and interests. Reporting is getting more robust, and ads are being expanded to move beyond the traditional text format and into video and photo ads.
The tangible value offered by this medium makes it perhaps the most popular type of online advertising today, and with major research going into ways to make PPC ads even more targeted and effective, you would be served to strongly consider testing out this type of advertising if you have not already done so.
