Many people think of modern advertising methods almost exclusively as Internet advertising.

This post starts coverage of Internet advertising with paid search advertising or what is commonly called pay per click or ppc advertising.

What Is PPC Advertising?

If you haven’t read the prior six posts on modern advertising methods, you can link to the first one below. Each post then links to the next.

Modern Advertising Methods 1: Introduction

Ppc advertising is also referred to as adwords advertising, keyword advertising and search engine advertising.

Adwords is the name of Google’s ppc advertising program. It is the largest ppc advertising program on the Internet. Originally adwords advertising was relatively inexpensive, but today prices have increased to the point that many small business owners can’t afford it. Yahoo, MSN and other search services also offer ppc advertising, often for less than Google.

All ppc advertising is keyword advertising because businesses purchase ppc advertising by keywords. They combine relevant and related keywords to form a ppc advertising campaign. Then when someone types one of the campaign keywords, the ad shows either above or to the right of the organic search results.

How Is PPC Advertising Priced?

The search engine determines the page and position that your ppc advertising displays depending on:

Does PPC Advertising Attract A Different Market Than Organic Searchers?

Some researchers contend that different types of people click on ppc ads compared than click on organic search results. I’ve read studies that found ppc clickers younger, less likely to purchase, and better educated. But I can’t vouch for the reliability of those studies.

Many people have lost their advertising investments with ppc advertising. Others have made fortunes using it. You can find research for improving pay per click results as e-books from Internet marketers.

All encourage split testing to build ads that will effectively get traffic and sales from ppc advertising. And Google makes such split testing easy.

What Makes PPC Advertising A Modern Advertising Method?

What makes ppc a modern advertising method is that it’s interactive. Searchers see the ads only if they type in relevant keywords. Then they must choose to click on the ad.

Ppc advertising is also targeted. But many advertisers target by keywords rather than by searcher’s characteristics. This makes it more difficult to write sales pages that effectively appeal to the target market. Some Internet marketers conduct surveys and other research to acquire information on people who search by certain keywords. Many use ppc advertising to get clickers to take a survey.

But most use ppc advertising to either send searchers to an opt-in (squeeze) page or a sales page. So ppc is a modern advertising method because it gets the searcher to take an immediate action.

Searchers start by clicking on the ad, then opt-in to a list for information, or go to a sales page where they can purchase and often download a digital product immediately.

The next post in this series on modern advertising methods covers advertising on Websites and blogs.
You can access it below:

Modern Advertising Methods 8: On Site Ads

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Posted 9-11-06: Modern Advertising Methods 7: PPC Advertising

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