Floating Ads – An Overview

A floating ad is a type of rich media Web advertisement that appears uninitiated, superimposed over a user-requested page, and disappears or becomes unobtrusive after a specific time period (typically 5-30 seconds). The most basic floating ads simply appear over the Web page, either full screen or in a smaller rectangular window.

They may or may not provide a means of escape, such as a close button. More sophisticated versions can come in any shape or size and include sound, animation, and interactive components. Floating ads use a variety of technologies, such as a combination of Flash and dynamic HTML (DHTML), and may have the ability to display differently according to the user's browser capabilities. United Virtualities and Eyeblaster (Mediamind) are two advertising media companies that offer floating ads.

Floating ads grab the viewer's attention and tend to be more interesting to view than other formats. The Boston.com Web site recently featured a highly successful campaign using United Virtualities' Shoshkele ad, in which a Boston Globe delivery truck drives on from the left and crosses the screen, with newspapers flying out of the truck to houses in the background. When the truck drives off the right side of the screen, a small rectangular ad floats up to the right top corner, offering 50% off home delivery.

According to a How Stuff Works article about Web advertising, a floating ad generates a click through rate of about 30 clicks per thousand impressions, similar to the rates for pop-up ads and much higher than the cited 2-5 clicks per thousand impressions for a banner Ad. Although the floating ads don't necessarily generate more clicks than pop-ups, they are thought to be more memorable and have a greater branding effect as a result. They often include tracking capabilities that report not only the numbers of clicks to the ads, but the number of times users reload a page to see the ad again.

Benefits of Floating Ads

1. Floating ads have proven to increase brand exposure through the delivery of visually engaging, high impact content that 'floats' above your publishers' web pages. The prevalence of the floating ad in recent years is attributed largely to the high impact it delivers.
2. Publisher is given full control over positioning and layering attributes. By specifying screen coordinates and z-index as parameter values passed to the Mediaplex ad tag, the publisher can effectively optimize the delivery of the ad so it refrains from obscuring or interfering with their site’s core content and other layer elements.
3. Publisher may control the timeout of the floating ad to comply with their own specifications. 

Source: searchcrm.techtarget.com and www.mojorichmedia.com

Types of Display Advertising

The large majority of online advertising has a cost that is brought about by usage or interaction of an ad; there are a few other methods of advertising online that only require a onetime payment. The Million Dollar Homepage is a very successful example of this. Visitors were able to pay $1 per pixel of advertising space and their advert would remain on the homepage for as long as the website exists with no extra costs.

Below are the major types of display advertising;

Floating ad: An ad which moves across the user's screen or floats above the content.

Expanding ad: An ad which changes size and which may alter the contents of the webpage.

Polite ad: A method by which a large ad will be downloaded in smaller pieces to minimize the disruption of the content being viewed

Wallpaper ad: An ad which changes the background of the page being viewed.

Trick banner: A banner ad that looks like a dialog box with buttons. It simulates an error message or an alert.

Pop-up: A new window which opens in front of the current one, displaying an advertisement, or entire webpage.

Pop-under: Similar to a Pop-Up except that the window is loaded or sent behind the current window so that the user does not see it until they close one or more active windows.

Video ad: similar to a banner ad, except that instead of a static or animated image, actual moving video clips are displayed. This is the kind of advertising most prominent in television, and many advertisers will use the same clips for both television and online advertising.

Map ad: text or graphics linked from, and appearing in or over, a location on an electronic map such as on Google Maps.

Mobile ad: an SMS text or multi-media message sent to a cell phone.

Superstitial: An animated adv on a Web page from Enliven Marketing Technologies. It uses video, 3D content or Flash to provide a TV-like advertisement. Used to be known as Unicast Transitional ads as they were originally made by Unicast Communications but the company was acquired by Viewpoint Corporation in 2004, which then changed its name to Enliven in 2008.

Interstitial ad: a full-page ad that appears before a user reaches their original destination.

In addition, ads containing streaming video or streaming audio are becoming very popular with advertisers.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

Online Display Advertising – An Overview

Display advertising is graphical advertising on the World Wide Web that appears next to content on web pages, IM applications, email, etc.

These ads, often referred to as banners, come in standardized ad sizes, and can include text, logos, pictures, or more recently, rich media.

Rich media, synonymous for interactive multimedia, is enhanced media that utilizes a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactivity content for active participation from the recipient of the ad.

The internet has become an ongoing emerging source that tends to expand more and more. The growth of this particular medium attracts the attention of advertisers as a more productive source to bring in consumers.

A clear advantage consumers have with online advertisement is the control they have over the product, choosing whether to check it out or not.

Online advertisements may also offer various forms of animation. In its most common use, the term "online advertising" comprises all sorts of banner, e-mail, in-game, and keyword advertising, on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace has received increased relevance. Web-related advertising has a variety of sites to publicize and reach a niche audience to focus its attention to a specific group. Research has proven that online advertising has given results and is growing business revenue. For the year 2012, Jupiter research predicted $34.5 billion in US online advertising spending.

You may picture display advertising like magazine or newspaper ads, just online and - like TV commercials - with the possibility of moving from static to interactive, flash and video. However, display advertising has a significant advantage over advertising in magazines, newspapers and TVs:

1. Targeting options such as demographic and behavioral targeting are available to laser in on your audience and,
2. You can track the performance of your campaign daily to measure metrics such as impressions, clicks and conversions to calculate your ROI.

Online advertisement as Digital Promotions for Television

Online advertisement can also be classified as Digital Promotions. Digital promotion in connection to the television industry is when networks use authentic digital resources to promote their new shows in a growing vast range of venues.  Television networks development of digital off air promotional strategies allowed digital promotion to remain significant to the advertisement advancement in the television.

Examples of television online digital promotions:

The Sci Fi network for loaded a special recap episode of Battlestar Galactica onto Microsoft’s Xbox online gaming service; this gave the audience additional opportunities to sample content if they may or may not be familiar with the show.

Another example of digital promotion in television is when network CBS incorporated new digital technologies of Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices that were able to download a thirty seconds clip of the new advertised show on their devices; consumers standing in range of billboard don’t need an internet link to down load the show’s content. These non-linear viewing opportunities provided as a valuable tool for gaining audiences; and to encourage them to intersection with the linear audience.

Revenue models

The three most common ways in which online advertising is purchased are CPM, CPC, and CPA.

CPM (Cost Per Mille) or CPT (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) is when advertisers pay for exposure of their message to a specific audience. "Per mille" means per thousand impressions, or loads of an advertisement. However, some impressions may not be counted, such as a reload or internal user action.

CPV (Cost Per Visitor) is when advertisers pay for the delivery of a Targeted Visitor to the advertisers website.

CPV (Cost Per View) is when advertisers pay for each unique user view of an advertisement or website (usually used with pop-ups, pop-under and interstitial ads).

CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) is when advertisers pay each time a user clicks on their listing and is redirected to their website. They do not actually pay for the listing, but only when the listing is clicked on. This system allows advertising specialists to refine searches and gain information about their market. Under the Pay per click pricing system, advertisers pay for the right to be listed under a series of target rich words that direct relevant traffic to their website, and pay only when someone clicks on their listing which links directly to their website. CPC differs from CPV in that each click is paid for regardless of whether the user makes it to the target site.

CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) or PPF (Pay Per Performance) advertising is performance based and is common in the affiliate marketing sector of the business. In this payment scheme, the publisher takes all the risk of running the ad, and the advertiser pays only for the amount of users who complete a transaction, such as a purchase or sign-up. This model ignores any inefficiency in the seller's web site conversion funnel.

The following are common variants of CPA:

CPL (Cost Per Lead) advertising is identical to CPA advertising and is based on the user completing a form, registering for a newsletter or some other action that the merchant feels will lead to a sale.

CPS (Cost Per Sale), PPS (Pay Per Sale), or CPO (Cost Per Order) advertising is based on each time a sale is made.

eCPM: Effective CPM or eCPM calculated through other conversion events such as Cost per Clicks, Cost per Downloads, Cost per Leads etc. for example when an advertiser getting $2 per download and for 100,000 impressions you received 10 downloads worth $20, in this case your effective CPM or eCPM will be 2*20*1000/100,000= $0.4

Fixed Cost: Advertiser paying fixed cost for delivery frame by campaign flight dates without any relevance to performance

Cost per conversion describes the cost of acquiring a customer, typically calculated by dividing the total cost of an ad campaign by the number of conversions. The definition of "Conversion" varies depending on the situation: it is sometimes considered to be a lead, a sale, or a purchase.

Source: help.yahoo.com and www.wikipedia.com

Look at Pay-Per-Click Tools for Small Business

Managing online paid-search-term campaigns can be like water torture for a small-business owner: A slow drip of deadliness, choosing keywords and deciding what to pay for each on services like Google AdWords and Microsoft AdCenter.

For the uninitiated, paid-search campaigns involve advertisers paying a fee, usually based on clicks or views, to have their links placed high on search-engine results pages. They typically bid on keywords or keyword phrases. Users can find themselves guessing at the words those searching for your products or services might enter into Google, Bing, Yahoo or other search engine. All for the prospect of having your short bit of linked copy appear across the top and on the right side of a web-search results page.

Bigger companies often have help from pricey pay-per-click automation and management services and perhaps professional search marketers. But small and midsize businesses face a tougher task in finding affordable support for paid-search marketing. Programs exist, but none are easy in my view. Or even that is affordable. So to get a feel for the best choices in a tight market, below are the three lower-cost paid - search marketing tools.

Click Sweeper

What you get: A relatively deep, but affordable, pay-per-click bid-management tool. Click Sweeper, by Santa Clara, Calif.-based Varazo, supports Google, Yahoo and Microsoft accounts and offers a nice set of features to optimize your keywords. Four automated bidding strategies let users prioritize keyword bids based on cost, ad ranking, and number of conversions or return on investment. There are analytics tools that can increase the cost, and ways to manage actual ad copy and create performance alerts. You can also generate reports and graphs to track which keywords work and which don’t.

What you get: A great suite of Google AdWords campaign-building tools. Boston-based Word Stream offers a pay-per-click management platform that lets users easily build ad campaigns from scratch or fine-tune campaigns with some cool keyword analysis features.
What you get: A great suite of Google AdWords campaign-building tools. Boston-based Word Stream offers a pay-per-click management platform that lets users easily build ad campaigns from scratch or fine-tune campaigns with some cool keyword analysis features.
What you get: What amounts to an entry-level, top-end paid-search tool. If your business invests significant money in paid-search marketing, then Clickable is for you. You get a top-line PPC management tool that works with Google, Yahoo, Bing and even Facebook. It even -- for an additional $300 per month -- will assign an employee to help you design ad strategies -- that’s actually an affordable option, considering the cost of paid search.
What you get: What amounts to an entry-level, top-end paid-search tool. If your business invests significant money in paid-search marketing, then Clickable is for you. You get a top-line PPC management tool that works with Google, Yahoo, Bing and even Facebook. It even -- for an additional $300 per month -- will assign an employee to help you design ad strategies -- that’s actually an affordable option, considering the cost of paid search.
Source: www.entrepreneur.com

Why you might like it: It’s flexible. Overall we found that Click Sweeper strikes a good balance between automatic bidding and user control. You can let the tool do the bidding for you, or if you need to micromanage a few keywords, you can enter bids manually. There is a nice sense of direct control over your spend.

Why you might not like it: its complex. That’s partly due to the nature of the pay-per-click beast, but there are numerous menus, tabs and options to set for every keyword. So gearing up the service can feel as onerous as trying to manage your AdWords campaign with no help. Click Sweeper does offer a set of tutorial videos. They’re dry and watching them takes time, but they can get the job done.

What to do: If you are outgrowing Google’s Adwords tools, Click Sweeper is logical step. Just be sure you give yourself plenty of time and patience to figure it out.

Word Stream for PPC

Why you might like it: Ease of use. Word Stream simply shines at managing keywords. A long list of powerful keyword research tools helps you decide how to build your campaigns and write ad copy. And Word Stream does a nice job of suggesting new or related keywords, and recommending words to avoid. We especially liked the way the tool helps to effectively group keywords, one of the trickiest parts of search-engine marketing.

Why you might not like it: Simplistic keyword bid management. Word Stream does a good job of tracking how keywords perform, but users might miss the opportunity to assign complex rules and goals for bidding that are available in some other services. So you can waste money, unless you have a firm grasp of your bid strategy.

What to do: For ongoing paid-search-marketing efforts, Word stream makes a lot of sense. It offers a nice mix of cost and features for a more sophisticated pay-per-click marketing effort.

Clickable

Why you might like it: Clickable offers a powerful mix of features well suited to most small business needs. It generates daily bid recommendations based on revenue goals. Custom reports track and compare whatever data you’d like and turns it into a neatly branded presentation. The bulk keyword editing tool quickly manages your ad copy and campaigns simultaneously across different search engines, which can be handy for an advertising blitz. And social media gets its due: Facebook marketing tools also help your business break into what some are calling “F-Commerce.”

Why you might not like it: While Clickable may look affordable compared with sophisticated paid-search marketing, it isn't low cost. Expect to spend about $10,000 a year. And you still might feel constrained. Bottom line: Clickable may not be the best choice for smaller shops or those just wading into paid search marketing.

What to do: If you are looking for value over a full-service paid-search marketing agency, or if you feel comfortable running your own paid-search marketing internally, Clickable is an intriguing option. Just make sure you know the pay-per-click market, and have the money to invest. With up-front costs this steep, a return on investment might be tough to find.

Source: www.entrepreneur.com

Tips for Improving Pay-Per-Click Campaigns

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can be an effective way to drive traffic to your website quickly, but small businesses too often make mistakes that undermine their campaigns.

Here's how PPC works: Through programs such as Google AdWords and Facebook Ads, marketers specify an amount they're willing to pay for each visitor who clicks through to their sites. They also indicate whether they want their ads to appear in search engine results or content blocks embedded within websites, or both. It's an auction-style system through which the advertiser that bids the most for a targeted keyword receives the most exposure.

Although PPC advertising may sound simple, plenty of beginners have created campaigns that generate little click-through action because they target the wrong keywords or lack a compelling message. So, consider these suggestions for avoiding the seven mistakes that most new advertisers make:

1. Avoid "broad match" keywords.

One of the biggest mistakes is ignoring the difference between choosing specific keyword match types and setting all keywords as "broad match," which means that your ad will appear not just for your chosen keyword phrase, but also for any similar phrases or relevant variations your advertising program deems appropriate. Although broad match placements can help increase your exposure, they can also attract irrelevant traffic that costs you money.

For example, a PPC ad with the broad match term "show ideas" could be displayed for the search query "baby shower gift ideas." Even though the search query contains the broad match term, it isn't a relevant match.

To avoid losing money on irrelevant clicks, focus on phrase or exact match keywords.

2. Separate search and content ad placements.

Search network placement refers to PPC ads that appear in search query results, while content network placement means websites that display PPC ads as blocks within their pages. Most new PPC marketers select both the search and content networks when they set up their first campaigns, and they usually use the same keywords, ad content and payment amount for each click.

But the specific queries and websites that trigger your content network placements can be significantly different than what yields results on the search network. Running the same ads on both networks, therefore, could cost you money in terms of irrelevant placements. Although customizing takes more time and effort, it's far more efficient to tailor your keywords, ad copy and keyword bids for each network.

3. Use negative keywords, too.

PPC marketers often fail to use negative keywords, which allow you to specify where your ad should not appear. For example, in our "show ideas" and "baby shower gift ideas" example, the words "baby," "shower" and "gift" could be designated as negative keywords to help eliminate such irrelevant ad placements.

4. Efficiently target ad campaigns. 

Many advertisers aren't precise enough in targeting their campaigns. To increase efficiency, take advantage of features in PPC accounts that allow you to specify who sees the ads.

Here are a few areas to consider in targeting your campaigns:

• Multiple countries. If you plan to advertise in several countries, set up an ad group for each. Otherwise, limit your ad to U.S. placements.
• Micro-geographic focus. If you create an ad for a local business keyword -- "Mexican restaurants in Chicago," for example -- use the micro-geographic targeting features in your advertiser account to select the specific zip codes in which your ad will appear based on your business's delivery area.
• Time of day. If your ads generate the most conversions during a particular time of day, set them up to run only during those time periods.

5. Match landing pages to ads. 


Sending a visitor from your PPC ad to an irrelevant landing page not only disrupts the sales process, but also can also result in the assessment of lower ad quality scores. That means you'll pay more for each click and receive less exposure than advertisers with higher scores. Sending a visitor from your PPC ad to an irrelevant landing page not only disrupts the sales process, but also can also result in the assessment of lower ad quality scores. That means you'll pay more for each click and receive less exposure than advertisers with higher scores. Sending a visitor from your PPC ad to an irrelevant landing page not only disrupts the sales process, but also can also result in the assessment of lower ad quality scores. That means you'll pay more for each click and receive less exposure than advertisers with higher scores.

To avoid low relevance ad and landing page pairings, decrease the number of keywords. That will help make your landing pages as relevant as possible.

6. Test ad copy.

Writing effective ad copy can be difficult. Unless you test different versions of ads to see which perform best, you aren't maximizing the ROI of your campaign.

Most PPC platforms allow you to set up split tests that rotate different ads for each of your targeted keywords. To do the test effectively, adjust your setting so that ads will be served up randomly rather than according to the platform's formula of displaying the ad it determines will result in the most clicks.

7. Track your return on investment. 

To effectively manage PPC campaigns and improve your ROI, you need to know exactly which clicks are resulting in sales. To generate this data for free, tie your PPC account to Google Analytics to track which ads led visitors to your page and which visits resulted in sales. Without this information, you can't adjust your keyword bids or eliminate less effective ads and keywords.
To effectively manage PPC campaigns and improve your ROI, you need to know exactly which clicks are resulting in sales. To generate this data for free, tie your PPC account to Google Analytics to track which ads led visitors to your page and which visits resulted in sales. Without this information, you can't adjust your keyword bids or eliminate less effective ads and keywords.

Source: www.entrepreneur.com

Disadvantages of Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

Like with anything else in internet marketing pay-per-click advertising would have its own set of pros and cons.

Internet marketing is getting more and more competitive each and every day. Because of this reason, why a lot of marketers are finding various types of marketing campaigns for their products and services. Pay-per-click advertising is both easy and quick to put into operation. It also has the potential to be an extremely cost effective means of advertising, but only if approached with the right strategy and knowledge.

As easy as it is there are still many online marketers who seem to give up at the first sign of difficulty without realizing the wonders of pay-per-click advertising. We hear the similar issue all the time from new marketers: “How come my click-through is not converting?”

As good as it seems pay-per-click advertising has its own set of disadvantages and drawbacks. Let us go over some of these things so that at least you have a better picture of pay-per-click advertising.

Easy

You might be thinking that being an easy strategy should not be a disadvantage. There are two sides to this, yes, it is true that pay-per-click advertising is easy to get going, however it does not mean that success is on your side right away.

Before you fall into pay-per-click advertising you have to do careful keywords research to ensure you are not going to be part of an overflowing market. A sorry excuse for a copy will surely affect your ad’s ranking which means you are spending unnecessarily.

Click fraud

To explain this in non-technical language, click fraud happens when your competitors click on your advertisements because eating up your budget. Click fraud in per-pay-click advertising can be done by an actual person or it could be done by a program that is designed to click on ads without detection.

Be sure that you check the conversion rate of your pay-per-click with each search engine that you use. After getting this information drop whatever it is that is not doing well and save some money in the process.

Do not go thinking that since Google is the biggest search engine right now that you should only use that. It sure is big but together with that, there is a lot of competition. You stand a better chance of getting conversions if you use small pay-per-click programs, and not to mention it is less expensive.

Poor keyword research

What are your prospects doing to find products like yours? Do you know what they are typing in that search box? If you are guessing as to what that is then you are costing your business unnecessary expense.

A well-researched keyword phrase will clearly show what the main purpose of the search is. So when you think you have found a keyword, ask yourself, “What problem is this person trying to solve? What are his issues?” If you are not able to answer those then what you have is too general so you have to research again otherwise you are going to lose money.

If you are just starting out you might want to try out Google Adwords because that is for free and it can help by providing you an amazing range of information that will help you zero in on inexpensive, targeted keywords that will bring in people with a problem that your product can solve.

Scatter gun Ads

Every advertisement that you think of should be based on one keyword phrase that is relevant to one specific problem. Using an advertisement that is too general might result to clicks that are not valid. What do I mean? Someone might click it but in reality, these people are actually looking something entirely different.

In writing your advertisements make sure that you do it right, spend some time on it. Write as if you are the one with problems that needs resolution. Use your keyword in the header and try to integrate it to the body of the advertisement. In the body of your advertisement, be sure to mention the product benefits instead of just mentioning the features.

Unrelated landing page

People click on your advertisement because they want to know if you can solve their problems, so if you link unrelated landing pages and prospects see it is a different thing then they will for sure close that window and never click on your advertisement ever again.

If your prospects click, on an advertisement, that sells handbags and then they are taken to a landing page with all sorts of other products, or they have to figure out how to navigate to get to the handbags section then chances are you have lost a sale.

Click-through cost money and conversions keep you in business

So be sure that you make the most out of each click you receive. The conversion of each click is what keeps your business going.

Continuous work

If your advertisement is not working, test other advertisements against it by modifying some elements and running them against each other. Think of your original ad the control ad, change the headline, and see if the new ads yield better results. Keep doing this until you get the results that you want.

Source: internethomebasedbusiness.startup-internetbusiness.com

Benefits of Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

Companies of all sizes in all industries are taking advantage of pay per click advertising’s immediate and quantifiable results.  Pay-Per-Click (PPC) delivers highly targeted pre-qualified traffic and your company’s message is delivered the very customers already searching for your product or service.  

Another PPC benefit is that it also offers the unique ability to test messaging, enhance both on- and off-line branding, and quickly adjust to shifting market conditions. 

Immediate Search Visibility – 

If your company does not have strong search engine visibility, pay per click marketing is the fastest and easiest way to show up on the search engines. SEO Inc’s Paid Search managers can launch a new campaign in a matter of days and optimize your campaigns to drive pre-qualified visitors to your site.

Reduce Costs – 

From proven keyword expansion and bid management techniques to ad testing and landing page optimization, through the effective keywords advertiser will get his own targeted customer to his brand.  Whenever the user use the keyword to search any on internet the Ad will display on the page.  Also advertiser will only pay for clicks not for any impressions; this will help to advertiser for reducing cost.

Maximize ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) – 

Working closely with ad campaigns we will get to know the performance of the Ads and collected leads will maximize the Return on Ad spends to the advertiser.  This enables us to get more clicks for the advertising dollar and to deliver the highest quality traffic.

Increase Depth of Keyword Targeting – 

If you have a smaller website but want to target a large amount of keywords, you will need to use PPC advertising. Organic search will only support keywords that show up on your website while with PPC you can target as many keywords as you want.

Reinforce Branding – 

Supplement already strong search engine rankings with PPC and you control more of the search engine results pages (SERP’s) for searches on your branded keyword phrases. Branded keywords are often inexpensive and provide excellent opportunities for testing and also remarketing.

Re-marketing – 

Every marketer knows that the more a potential customer is exposed to your brand and messaging over time, the more likely they will become a customer. Remarketing allows you to show ads to users who've previously visited your website as they browse the Web. Find out more about Re-marketing.

Testing Capabilities – 

Pay per click marketing offers a tremendous opportunity for marketers to test new ideas whether it is testing a marketing message prior to a new product launch, experimenting with offers or price points, or just improving an existing PPC campaign. 

Increase Organic Click Through Rates – 

Once the adopted keywords are search organic we will get a highest rate of valid click through rates from search engines,  but the only one thing is it will take more time and depends on our update of the websites or landing pages.

Local to Global Exposure – 

One of the best PPC benefits is the ability to choose where your ads are served by geography. If you are large or small and want to grow, PPC allows you to target new geographic or demographic markets. . It doesn’t matter if you have a small local business or if you are major global brand, PPC has benefits for all types of companies of all sizes.

Source: www.seoinc.com

Advantages of Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising could dramatically increase the number of qualified visitors to your website. However, it is important to realize that these potential advantages only come with a skillfully implemented and managed PPC campaign. Poor planning and inappropriate management could see you accruing costs without any subsequent increase in sales. 

Small initial investment

In general the search engines don't charge anything to insert a PPC advertisement.  They may have a small initial fee to set up an account, but after that you only have to pay each time someone actually clicks on your Ad.

Set your own budget

With PPC advertising, you can tailor your budget to your sales goals and how aggressive you would like to be, keeping you from wandering over budget or getting in over your head.

PPC advertising levels the playing field

Even if your business is comprised of three people and a basement office, you can still compete with national chains.

Real-time Track

We make sure your PPC campaign stays as effective and efficient as possible by tracking keyword and phrase successes (and losses), which ads bring in the most traffic, conversion rates and more. By doing this, you can be assured that your PPC ads are operating at maximum levels, especially since we can make any necessary changes immediately. Compare this to other forms of advertising, where results can take months to determine and changes can take additional weeks to implement.

National exposure

Since both Google and Yahoo!, along with their network partners, claim to reach 80% of Internet users, placing a PPC ad on one of those engines will ensure your site is getting out there - and we're talking Nome, Alaska, out-there.

Increase local visibility

So maybe you own a gym or a hair salon, or maybe you run a small landscaping company. Even though your clients are going to be exclusively local, PPC is still a worthwhile investment for you. By carefully crafting and targeting your site's campaign, you can pre-qualify your site's traffic based on location or other factors to make sure you are driving the right people to your site. Learn more about local PPC.

Honest-to-goodness marketing

If your business is new to the market, your site has been re-designed or launched recently, or you just want people to know who you are, PPC is for you. PPC ads are posted at the very top and down the right side of search engine results - prime real estate on the page that draws the eye right away.

Even if you're convinced that Natural SEO is the best option for you, top results take time. Consider PPC advertising as your "while-you-wait" marketing tool to get results while your Natural SEO efforts start building up.

Source: www.tkg.com 

PPC - Pay per click

Pay per click (also called Cost per click) is an Internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, where advertisers pay the publisher (typically a website owner) when the ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market.

Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system. PPC "display" advertisements are shown on web sites or search engine results with related content that have agreed to show ads. This approach differs from the "pay per impression" methods used in television and newspaper advertising.

In contrast to the generalized portal, which seeks to drive a high volume of traffic to one site, PPC implements the so-called affiliate model that provides purchase opportunities wherever people may be surfing. It does this by offering financial incentives (in the form of a percentage of revenue) to affiliated partner sites.

The affiliates provide purchase-point click-through to the merchant. It is a pay-for-performance model: If an affiliate does not generate sales, it represents no cost to the merchant. Variations include banner exchange, pay-per-click, and revenue sharing programs.

Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a keyword query matches an advertiser's keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site.

Among PPC providers, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the three largest network operators, and all three operate under a bid-based model.

The PPC advertising model is open to abuse through click fraud, although Google and others have implemented automated systems to guard against abusive clicks by competitors or corrupt web developers.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

Trends in Online Advertising

Following up on the Top 10 Tech Trends Of The Decade and drilling down on trend item five, in this post we’re going to look at the evolution of online advertising and what we might expect to see in the coming decade. At present, the online advertising industry is at $55 billion, and mobile advertising is at $2 billion. With the rise of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, mobile advertising will gain momentum.

Below are the top ten trends;

1. Paid Search Rules:

Google ruled the past decade with paid search advertising. There is still no better, more effective form of advertising on the Internet. Keywords are becoming expensive, but if you know what you are doing, you will still be able to find cost-effective ways of acquiring customers using PPC.

2. Organic Search Gains Momentum:

Increasingly though, marketers are starting to understand the importance of organic search. Almost 90% of the entire Web’s search traffic flows through organic search, yet the search marketing industry are generally obsessed with PPC. This decade, some sanity and rationalization will take the place of this weird dichotomy.

3. Display Advertising and Vertical Ad Networks:

The best trend I have spotted during the past decade is the rise of vertical ad networks like Glam Media, Federated, HotChalk, Travel Ad Network, and others that focus on specific verticals. This is pretty much the only way for advertisers to do brand advertising across the fragmented spectrum of blogs and other online hangouts for audiences, including social media. In the coming decade, vertical ad networks will get better at providing more value to advertisers through advanced technology for audit, measurement, analytics and optimization, as well as richer engagement capabilities like interactive and video ads.

4. Social Media Advertising:

Social networks, especially the big ones like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, have a lot of information about individuals. They have not yet figured out ways to monetize this information and create a safe, non-intrusive, yet personalized framework through which advertisers can do high-precision targeting. This is definitely coming in the next few years.

5. In-Game Advertising:

Consumers are spending excessive amounts of time online playing games. We foresee a significant uptick in in-game advertising this decade.

6. Advertising Apps and Games:

Now that apps have taken over the mobile web, and is even coming on to PCs, advertising apps and games are a natural progression. Marketers will see it is obvious that instead of a 30-second prime-time advertising slot, a branded app or game that can engage users for three minutes is a far better use of ad dollars.

7. Interactive Infomercials:

Television infomercials are an effective way to market products. But the Internet offers significantly more cost-effective and targeted ways to market using the same concept, but delivered through display ad networks, viral videos, and so on.

8. Video Advertising:

Whether they are about political campaigns or consumer brands, YouTube videos have a viral power, and everyone knows it. This decade, we will see a huge amount of creativity deployed on this art form.

9. Mobile Advertising:

The rise of the mobile Web – through mobile apps on smart phones and tablets in the West, and through the avalanche of cell phone adoption in the emerging markets from Brazil to Indonesia – opens the door for mobile advertising as a category to gain tremendous momentum this decade. In particular, location-based advertising, coupons, and special offers at highly targeted and precise moments – all look very promising.

10. Better Analytics, Optimization, and Targeting:

Powering all this and more, we will see a vastly more sophisticated analytics, optimization, and targeting infrastructure that doesn’t quite exist today. There will be innovation in affordable tools to optimize PPC, SEO, mobile advertising, social media advertising, and every other conceivable online customer acquisition method.

Source: www.sramanamitra.com