Pay-per-click (PPC) has been around for more a decade, and while Google has made some positive changes to it, it's showing its age. If you think of the Internet advertising process as a series of actions, it would go like this:
Impression -> Click -> Action
Back in the old days the metric was CPM (cost per thousand), and advertisers paid per impression (getting the ad on the screen). CPM favored the publisher over the advertiser, as the publisher's responsibility ended at the first part of the process. DoubleClick, an early ad serving company, came up with their DART system to match the right advertiser with the right screen in order to maximize the return on CPM.
PPC moved the metric forward in the process, measuring success (and payment) based not on how many times the ad was served, but how many times it was actually clicked. When most people think of PPC they think of Adsense, Google's contextual advertising engine. But PPC is employed in banner advertising, on big ad farms like Doubleclick and other companies, and in some affiliate programs, though the number seems to be waning.
The latest incarnation of search engine based PPC (thanks to Google), works like this: you select keywords that you think people will use to search for stuff related to what you sell. For example, if you sell pretzel dough you might want to advertise under pretzels or making pretzels or something along those lines. Selecting keywords is way beyond the scope of this article, but there are plenty of companies out there that make a living helping you pick keywords.
Anyway, you then bid on those keywords and your ad is shown on the page with the search results.
With Adsense Google moved the context from the search engine results page to your web site content. It reads your site and decides what keywords to use to display advertising on your site, just as it would with a Google search.
For affiliate programs it's a little different, but the concept is the same. You choose the ads (or pay someone a piece of the action to choose the ads for you), and they get displayed on your pages. Rather than selecting the keywords explicitly, you are selecting the ads based on what you (or your agent) thinks people who have chosen to read your content may have an interest in seeing.
When someone clicks on the ad, you get paid. It's that simple.
For Adsense, appearing first on the list makes all the difference. A study suggests that being the #1 choice increases your chance of being clicked by up to 40%, because a lot of people don't look past the first entry (I always check the first few). The difference in bids between the first position and second position could be staggering. For example, 1900 people searched Google for the word tax yesterday. The top spot in Adsense would have cost you $25.12. Positions 2 and 3 drop to $6.96, and 4 and 5 would have cost you $4.24.
My experience with Adsense tells me that in this case the first position would probably pay Google close to $10.
As the publisher, this is a home run. Every time the person clicks I get a $5 bill. God, what a country!
As the advertiser, $10 to get the person in the door seems like a lot of money to me. If I'm selling a high margin item (like maybe tax software or one of those quickie tax loans), it seems like it may be okay.
But I still have to get them to buy. Conversion rates (getting the person to take some action once they've clicked on the ad and gone to your site) vary wildly, but I always use 1.5 - 3% of those who click on an ad. That means that 97 - 98.5% of the people who click on the ad do not buy. Let's use 2% as an example. That means that for all the five dollar bills flying into the publisher's pocket, only about 2 people out of every hundred will buy anything. So for every $1000 I spend I get 20 sales. That means that every sale costs me $50. Your results will vary, of course, depending on how targeted your keywords are and your industry and offer. Get the conversion up to 5%, for example, and you will be down to $20 per sale, which is a little better. I am designing a what-if tool to help with this, and I'll post it when it's ready.
One of the reasons for low conversion is probably click fraud. If an unscrupulous person wants to make money in PPC, all he needs to do is find a bunch of people (or computers) to click on the ads on his website continually, and he'll reap the rewards.
Barron's believes that the smart money is getting out of PPC. They cite FTD as an example:
Flower giant FTD Group (FTD) recently complained about the high price of search advertising. "During the Christmas season, certain online search engine costs increased significantly over the prior year, and as such we made the decision not to pursue the resulting high-cost order volume," said Michael Soenen, chief executive officer.
First off, let me just say that as an advertising exec I pitched FTD, and they didn't strike me as the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. That being said, it's easy to see why FTD wants out. Being #1 or #2 in the keyword Flowers around Valentine's Day would have cost between $6.25 and $10.00. There were 100,000 searches on the days close to VD on that keyword, and 11,500 on Flowers Delivered, which would have cost between $5.03 and $6.72.
Some simple arithmetic shows me that FTD nets about $6.20 per transaction across its network. So the transaction is either a wash or a loss. FTD is the number 1 ad on Google for their keywords, so I guess they decided to eat that first transaction, counting on continuity to save them. According to Barron's this isn't going to work either:
One industry executive noted that the lifetime value of a customer acquired through Google for his/her business had approached zero. Oops. So much for that theory.
So the answer seems to be that the big guys are getting out. Using the flowers example, though, the top 5 ads are FTD, ProFlowers, Hallmark, 1-800-Flowers and Teleflora. So I guess it's going to happen over time. So where is the future? According to the inventor of pay-per-click himself, Bill Gross (formerly of GoTo.com), the future is in pay-per-action, which moves the metric down to the final part of the Internet advertising transaction, where we think it belongs. There's a terrific article on Seochat.com that has more information on this. Pay-per-action is simple both parties have a stake in the outcome of the click.
More Articles.: Quality Guidelines Of Google Adword / Read about Ads / Web 2.0 Ad Serving
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Showing posts with label PPC advertising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PPC advertising. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Sunday, October 4, 2009
"Pay-Per Click" Ad Campaign: Earn More By Spending Less
What is "Pay-Per Click"?
"Pay-Per Click", is an easy to understand advertising strategy. There are around 300 million searches at major search engines everyday. This causes 80% of internet traffic. Placing your websites on these search engines is very important in reaching as many potential customers as possible. But in order to be seen and clicked most frequently, your website should be viewed at the top most of the search list. Most people only reach up to the third page of a search engine so the lower your rank, the lesser the chance you will be clicked. In "Pay-Per Click" advertising, you pay to be always visible on the internet. You select keywords or key phrases about your website, and the highest bidder ranks the best. There is no upfront cost. You only pay after a visitor clicks your link. This is why it is called "Pay-Per Click".
Everyday millions of people around the world click on Pay-Per Click Advertising Campaign. With the booming internet industry and the ever growing online business, an ad of virtually anybody on the planet can be seen on the internet anywhere in the world.
The "Pay-Per Click" advertising campaign is the premier growth area in online marketing. Last year, an estimated $741.2 million was spent on "Pay-Per Click" advertising. The usual search engine optimization can take weeks or even months to produce results. "Pay-Per Click" advertising can attract customers at an instant. Why? Because, this cutting edge ad campaign can be placed on any website and can be viewed by potential online customers, anywhere, anytime and all the time. The only challenge is placing the ads on proper websites that will attract possible customers for a specific product or services.
"Pay-Per Click" advertising campaign attracts the right consumers at the shortest possible time. This is the most cost effective way of marketing products or services. You can also monitor the customers who visit your site, what they are looking for and what they are buying. With the right creativity on using the right search-phrases, we can direct the right people who are willing to do business with us.
"Pay-Per Click" advertising can easily be managed 24 hours per day and 7 days a week through the internet. This allows you improve the campaign strategy by effectively responding to the activities of both customers and competitors. So what are you waiting for? "Pay-Per Click" now and let your business take the fast route to success.
Summary: What is "Pay-Per Click"? "Pay-Per Click", is an easy to understand advertising strategy. There are around 300 million searches at major search engines everyday. This causes 80% of internet traffic. Placing your websites on these search engines is very important in reaching as many potential customers as possible. But in order to be seen and clicked most frequently, your website should be viewed at the top most of the search list. Most people only reach up to the third page of...
"Pay-Per Click", is an easy to understand advertising strategy. There are around 300 million searches at major search engines everyday. This causes 80% of internet traffic. Placing your websites on these search engines is very important in reaching as many potential customers as possible. But in order to be seen and clicked most frequently, your website should be viewed at the top most of the search list. Most people only reach up to the third page of a search engine so the lower your rank, the lesser the chance you will be clicked. In "Pay-Per Click" advertising, you pay to be always visible on the internet. You select keywords or key phrases about your website, and the highest bidder ranks the best. There is no upfront cost. You only pay after a visitor clicks your link. This is why it is called "Pay-Per Click".
Everyday millions of people around the world click on Pay-Per Click Advertising Campaign. With the booming internet industry and the ever growing online business, an ad of virtually anybody on the planet can be seen on the internet anywhere in the world.
The "Pay-Per Click" advertising campaign is the premier growth area in online marketing. Last year, an estimated $741.2 million was spent on "Pay-Per Click" advertising. The usual search engine optimization can take weeks or even months to produce results. "Pay-Per Click" advertising can attract customers at an instant. Why? Because, this cutting edge ad campaign can be placed on any website and can be viewed by potential online customers, anywhere, anytime and all the time. The only challenge is placing the ads on proper websites that will attract possible customers for a specific product or services.
"Pay-Per Click" advertising campaign attracts the right consumers at the shortest possible time. This is the most cost effective way of marketing products or services. You can also monitor the customers who visit your site, what they are looking for and what they are buying. With the right creativity on using the right search-phrases, we can direct the right people who are willing to do business with us.
"Pay-Per Click" advertising can easily be managed 24 hours per day and 7 days a week through the internet. This allows you improve the campaign strategy by effectively responding to the activities of both customers and competitors. So what are you waiting for? "Pay-Per Click" now and let your business take the fast route to success.
Summary: What is "Pay-Per Click"? "Pay-Per Click", is an easy to understand advertising strategy. There are around 300 million searches at major search engines everyday. This causes 80% of internet traffic. Placing your websites on these search engines is very important in reaching as many potential customers as possible. But in order to be seen and clicked most frequently, your website should be viewed at the top most of the search list. Most people only reach up to the third page of...
Beating Adwords - Mastering the Art of Pay Per Click Advertising
From the Wealthy Affiliates, comes Beating Adwords, a remarkable ebook, which is in my opinion, the most useful and most up-to-date AdWords guide available to date. Published by the amazing Carson and Kyle, successful internet marketing entrepreneurs in their own right and respected owners of WealthyAffiliate.com, Beating Adwords is the 'superior AdWords guide', providing an expert look at Google AdWords and simplifying the whole notion of earning significant and residual online income as an Affiliate Marketer from a Google AdWords campaign or other Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaign. It is written in an easy narrative that the newest newbie or beginner can understand and yet is jam-packed with unique and advanced strategies for experienced internet marketers alike, Beating Adwords takes you by the hand and leads you step by step through the process of affiliate marketing, showing you in easy to follow steps how to set up a Google AdWords account and campaign correctly and efficiently to generate a much higher income and return on investment (ROI) with lower CPC expenses.
These Wealthy Affiliates are AdWords 'experts' who are already earn an incredible income promoting affiliate products with PPC campaigns. I have personally utilized the techniques taught in all my campaigns and seen a dramatic improvement to my quality score, CTR and thus lower Cost per Click (CPC). By buying Beating Adwords and putting the ideas to work, you will not only recoup the price but also you should rapidly see a dramatic improvement in your campaigns and your AdWords income and ROI will start increasing dramatically.
To give you a feel for the depth of coverage in this definitive guide, here is the ebook’s main contents:
Section 1 - Introduction Welcome to Beating Adwords About the Authors Making Money Online Affiliate Marketing Pay Per Click Advertising
Section 2 – Getting Started Google Adwords Setting up Your Account
Section 3 – Affiliate Programs Finding Affiliate Programs Using Clickbank.com Profitable Keywords
Section 4 – Advertise Your Product Starting a New Adwords Campaign Adgroups Writing Effective Adcopy
Section 5 – Outsmart Your Competition Quality Score Effective Bidding TechniquesTraffic and Cost Being Profitable
Section 6 Adwords Optimization Inactive KeywordsWhat can you afford? Split Testing Dynamic Keyword Insertion CTR and Match Types Content Network
Section 7 – Web Pages that Sell Direct Linking vs. Landing Page Creating Relevant Web PagesThe Power of a Review. Review Pages for the Advanced Marketer Dynamic Page Optimization Sample Landing Pages
Section 8 – Success Staying Focused
Section 9 – Bonus Low Cost Advertising Techniques Promoting Beating Adwords
Section 10 – Resources Glossary
If you use, or are thinking of using PPC in your Internet Marketing efforts, Beating Adwords is the one and only product you need for Google AdWords success and PPC success generally and I have no hesitation in recommending it to any newbie or veteran alike who is serious about taming adwords and following the Way of the Wealthy Affiliate.
Summary: This Recently Updated and Innovative ebook can Immediately help de-mystify Adwords and Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising, Revealing the Secrets of the Wealthy Affiliates to Achieve Excellent and Improved Profitability!
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