Introduction to Search Engine Advertising

This is by far the most common method of advertising – when you type a search query into Google you instantly get about 11 ads displayed to you. Three of which you are forced to read before going on to the unpaid search engine results.

Most of us won’t realize this, but all the major search engines including Google, Yahoo, and Bing, have been consistently changing the way that their paid advertisements are displayed. Up until November of last year (2010) Google was calling their paid links “Sponsored Links,” now they identify them simply as “Ads.” This is in part due to an FTC mandate for search engines to clearly label advertisements so as to not trick consumers into clicking on ads – but this was also done for scientific reasons…long and intense research is constantly conducted by these search engine companies to ensure that advertisements are being displayed to the right audiences to deliver higher return on investment to advertisers and to ensure that search engine users aren’t clicking on links that are irrelevant, which would tarnish the search engine’s reputation and lead the user to try a different search engine. At any rate…

To get an advertising space on Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) you sign up for an account on Google AdWords, deposit money, create advertisements, then sit and wait for people to click on your ads. Search Engine Advertising follows the Pay-per-Click (PPC) model. Which means that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Other online advertising payment models include Pay-per-impression (PPM) where you pay each time someone views your ad and Pay-per-action (PPA), where you pay only when someone clicks on an ad and completes a pre-determined action on your website, like filling out a form or purchasing a product. The latter two models don’t apply for search engines so we’ll get back to those later.

 

Continue Reading:
Part 3: Search Engine Advertising: Online Ad Campaign Management
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This was just a part of The Guide to Online Advertising – download the complete guide here.

 

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