Pay-Per-Click Promotion

Paid Search Engine Promotion

Many Search Engines have now started offering paid placement programs in addition to their already existing programs. When someone searches for a specific term, the listings show up in the order of highest bidder first, second highest bidder second and so on. If two companies bid the same amount, the first bid gets priority for the listing and will be listed first. Such programs are called Paid Placement Programs or Pay-per-click programs. You only pay when someone clicks on your listing and is delivered to your website.

Benefits of Paid-Placement / Pay-per-click Campaigns

• Search Engine Marketing campaigns are effective for increasing web site traffic quickly.

• Pay-per-click programs will allow you to quickly test the ability for your web site to convert visitors to a call to action or make a purchase.

• You will be able to identify which keyword phrases will provide the best conversion rate.

While ordinary search results frequently include links to non-working pages, home pages with irrelevant content and filler listings, paid search content ensures a user will gain quick access to relevant sites of interest. Since each listing is displayed by either a keyword search or relevant text link, you are ensured only visitors with interest are being sent to your site. Thus, pay-per-click programs offer a more targeted approach.

The most prominent and successful Paid Placement programs are Google Adwords and Overture.

In 1998, Overture was the first to charge advertisers to be listed in its search results. Now, all the major search companies have jumped in. So-called paid-search revenue grew 40% last year, to $1.4 billion. It's now up to 23% of the $6 billion Net advertising market, which shrank 17% last year, according to analysts' projections.

Placing ads near search results offers the simple appeal of the Yellow Pages, but with different economics. Overture made $78 million last year on $668 million in sales, about half of the paid-search market. That's more than Yahoo made on $953 million of revenue, largely from traditional online ads such as banners. Paid search also pushed search specialists LookSmart Ltd. and Ask Jeeves Inc. into profitability in the fourth quarter. And the biggest potential initial public offering of an Internet company this year is Google Inc., which began offering pay-per-click search last year. Search ads will make up the lion's share of Google's revenue, estimated at $350 million to $400 million.

1.1 Google Adwords

Some advantages of Google Adwords are:

• Your price is automatically lowered to one cent more than your closest competitor.

• No one can lock in the top position because user click through rates and CPC determine where your ad is shown. The most relevant ads rise to the top.

• Google offers a unique set of tools to forecast your budget and select target keywords.

• You can target your ads to users in a specific country or only to speakers of a specific language.

Features of Google Adwords

• Competitive Pricing: AdWords Discounter automatically monitors your competition and lowers your CPC to one cent above theirs.

• Ranking: Rank is determined by combination of CPC and click through rate. If an ad is irrelevant to users, they won't click on it and it will move down the page. Your relevant ads will rise, at no extra cost to you.

• Campaign Management: Multiple ads per keyword. Google tracks individual ad performance to help you monitor which ones perform well. AdWords Discounter takes care of your campaign for you, dynamically raising and lowering your CPC within the range you specify to keep you in the position you want.

• Timing: Ads go live almost immediately once you create them.

• Minimum Deposit to start: $5.00 total startup cost

• Monthly Minimum Fee: None

• When Billed: Billed only for clicks received, after they're received.

• Budgeted Delivery: Set daily budget for your campaign. Continuous delivery each day over the time period at that level.

• Target by Country or Language: You choose who should see your ads from among 250+ countries and 14 languages.

• Tools: Enhanced keyword tool suggests other phrases AND most popular synonyms based on billions of searches. Results in better targeting and higher click-throughs.

• Ad Groups: Set a maximum price for an individual keyword or a group of keywords.

1.2 Google AdSense

This is a very recent tool from Google that has been earning rave reviews from experts all over. This tool focuses on a relatively new concept of marketing known as Contextual Marketing.

Contextual Marketing

This is a newly emerging but extremely targeted and effective form of promoting your online business. Consumers download specific software from a contextual marketing network organizer at no cost and install it on their desktops. When the consumer is about to make a purchase for a specific product or service or is placing a search query for that item, the software will beam advertising messages from suppliers of that product or service, offering some incentive to the consumer such as discounts or promotion offers. Through this facility, the advertiser (supplier) is getting an opportunity to promote his offering to a targeted consumer and that too at the point of sale or when there is an intention to buy. Thus contextual marketing offers a highly targeted marketing tool that connects the supplier with a genuine lead and spurs transaction.

The effectiveness of contextual marketing can be seen from the fact that response rates and conversion rates are from 5 to 20 times higher than the results from conventional online advertising.

Here’s how Google AdSense applies this concept.

Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant, text-based, un-obtrusive Google AdWords ads on their website's content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your users are looking for on your

site, you'll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages. The program is free, and Google pays you for clicks on the AdWords ads on your site.

There are no strict criteria for acceptance into the AdSense program, which, unlike other ad networks, does not place minimum traffic requirements on applicants. The only real criteria are the standard “acceptable content” requirements that exist just about everywhere. Of course, AdSense wants to attract quality content sites, and will only allow AdSense members to serve one ad per page – the service can’t be used for both banners and skyscrapers.

Once you’ve been accepted, you’ll be able to run AdSense advertisements on any site you own using the same ad code, provided you obey the guidelines. Reporting doesn’t occur in real time, but is updated regularly throughout the day. Currently, you cannot view reports based on a domain or site basis if you run the ads on more than one site.

This is what Google says about what makes AdSense different from others

This innovative new Google business solution will help you unleash the true revenue potential of your site.

AdSense Advantages

• AdSense is simple to join without any entry costs

• No technical skills required. Just a few lines of code to be copy pasted

• Only ads relevant to your content appear

• AdSense automatically shows appropriate ads for different sections. So it saves great deal of time and energy searching for relevant advertisers for different sections

• You're free to concentrate on providing good content and Google does the work of finding the best ads for your pages

• You can filter up to 200 URLs, so you can block ads for sites that don't meet your standards. You can also block strong competitors

• Access base of 100,000 advertisers

AdSense disadvantages

• Low flexibility -- Unlike other advertising sites where you can choose your advertisers and make choices on basis of payout, display and frequency, AdSense proves to be pretty inflexible.

• Free advertising -- The ad panels say "Ads by Google" - free advertising for Google. You don't earn anything if someone clicks on that link.

• You can filter out 200 URLs. For big sites this figure is not adequate

• Minimum payout is $100, which is fair enough for most webmasters but keeps the smaller ones out.

• Revenue sharing isn't disclosed by AdSense. Considering Google's reputation maybe it can be trusted, but such disclosures especially with regards to revenue sharing should have been made.

Very recently, the company added new features to Google AdSense, including preset color palettes to coordinate colors for the Web sites and the ads, automatic user feedback mechanisms, and reporting tools that tell participants their click-through rates and how much money they've made at any given time.

Current AdSense participants include the Food Network, Weather.com, ABC.com, Internet Broadcasting Systems, Lycos Europe, New York Post Online Edition, Reed Business Information, US News & World Report, and iVillage.

1.3 Overture

When you advertise in Overture Premium Listings™, your business appears in the top

U.S. search sites: MSN, Yahoo!, InfoSpace, Lycos, AltaVista, and Netscape.

Overture offers two sign-up plans, Fast Track or Self Serve. You have to select a few keywords with reference to your website. You have to then bid an amount (per click) and position in the search results for each of the keyword. If you have the highest bid for that position, Overture will display your website in the search result of the keyword selected, at the position selected, in each of the above mentioned search engines. Note that even if your website is displayed in the search results you do not get charged the amount bid by you per click. It is only when a user clicks on your website link from the search results that you get charged that amount.

The higher the position, the higher is the current bid amount. Also, in order to keep your account active, you have to spend at least $20 a month. Your account with Overture will be discontinued if the total clicks on your website amount to less than $20.

The two sign-up plans, Fast Track or Self Serve, give you the choice of expert assistance or starting out on your own. Fast Track charges an additional one-time service fee of $199 whereas Self Serve does not have any service fee.

When you sign up with Overture using the Fast Track Sign-up program, you will receive a customized proposal prepared by one of the Overture experts. When you receive your proposal, all you have to do is approve Overture's choices to get your search listings online. You can also make changes in the proposal yourself.

Two basic concepts apply to using these types of search engines (Overture and Google

AdWords) to your best advantage:

• While you obviously want to pay the least possible amount for each hit you get, you’re going to have to bid more if you want a higher listing and, therefore, more traffic. You have to carefully track the traffic you get from the search engine so you know the value of that traffic. If you don’t know the value, you could be

paying too much for your traffic or missing great opportunities to generate more traffic if you can afford the higher price.

In other words, let’s assume you’re selling an item with a $25 profit margin. If one (1%) percent of visitors to your site buy the product, then each visitor is worth twenty five ($0.25) cents to you. If you get the traffic for less than that, you’re making money on each sale.

• The other concept involves bidding for several hundred keywords at low prices such as one penny each. This way you get listed all over the search engine. Each keyword won’t bring you much traffic by itself, but the total may be a hundred or more hits per day. If you’re only paying a couple of pennies per hit for this traffic, then it should be profitable for you.

If you search popular terms like "business", you’ll find the cost to be number one is quite high and the position is usually held by a large enterprise like Inc. magazine or Entrepreneur magazine. Large companies are often willing to invest millions of dollars in building their brands so they’ll pay more for traffic than it would normally be worth. I strongly suggest you don’t compete with them unless you are absolutely sure your business model will justify it.

Often, you’ll be able to find a top ten ranking for a third or less than the price to be number “One”. Since you’re limited to buying only traffic that’s profitable for you, this position will be better suited for you. Even if you end up far lower in the rankings, you must stay within your proper range for investment. You’ll probably get less traffic than the number one ranking, but you’ll get traffic you can make money on. That’s far more important.

On another note, Overture is also planning to come up with its own Contextual Advertising business solution soon to compete with Google AdSense.

1.4 Searchfeed

Searchfeed is another pay-per-click program that has gained popularity in recent times. Based on site relevancy, you bid for placement within search results distributed to leading Web portals, industry specific sites and regional Internet service providers through the Private Label Feed (PLF) program. While the program is much like any other pay per click program, the difference is that Searchfeed has tied up with several portals and high traffic sites and visitors to those sites may thus use the Searchfeed engine to find suppliers.

You select relevant keywords for your website, create a title and description for each listing and bid on select keywords based on site relevance. You pay for each targeted lead only.

You determine the value of each unique visitor to your site using the most appropriate search terms to build continuous traffic. The more targeted the pay per click search term, the higher the bid you will want to make to ensure high placement. Because you can place an individual bid on each specific keyword or phrase being displayed, the value of each lead can be determined based on how targeted the interest of a potential visitor might be.

A deposit of $25 is required to activate your account. Bid amounts can be as low as 1 cent.

1.5 Ah-Ha

Ah-Ha.com, Inc. applies unique advertising programs to join websites to potential customers. Founded in 1999 as a filtered search engine, ah-ha now offers an array of products and services to advertisers and webmasters throughout the Internet, including Distribution and Partner Programs, Paid Listings, LogoLinks™, TopLinks Creatives, Guaranteed Inclusion, and Skyscraper advertisements. The company’s programs are designed to deliver targeted traffic to websites. The advertiser only pays for traffic delivered to their website and the partner builds bottom line revenue. The following programs are offered by ah-ha network.

Paid Listings - Paid Listings is an effective way to drive targeted visitors to your website. With this program, your company’s title, description, and URL appear whenever users type in keywords you selected, and the best benefit is that you only pay for visitors who click on your link.

LogoLink Account - With a LogoLink account, you have the advantage of our proven Paid Listings product, and you improve your clickthrough chances with your company logo displayed next to your listing. You have the bonus benefit of a graphic, which generates 4 times the clickthrough, and the branding benefits are endless.

Skyscraper Ads - Skyscraper ads are one of the most popular types of advertising used on the Internet today. ah-ha.com offers keyword-targeted, categorical, CPC, and run of network skyscraper ads that can benefit your company. Your banner will be prominently featured through our distribution partners including AltaVista, EarthLink, and LookSmart.

Guaranteed Inclusion - Guaranteed Inclusion allows you to submit your website listings for inclusion in the search results throughout websites such as Excite, DogPile, Verizon, WebCrawler, and more. This program gives you a yearly subscription to websites with an 85% Internet reach giving you an opportunity to reach millions

1.6 Sprinks

Sprinks is a self-service tool that provides advertisers an opportunity to place targeted ads across the web on a high-quality network of web properties. With Sprinks, advertisers can reach customers across a variety of online destinations.

Advertisers bid for placement within relevant search results (KeywordSprinks™), content pages (ContentSprinks™), opt-in, topical newsletters (DirectSprinks™), and geographically targeted content pages (LocalSprinks™). Sprinks' listing engine distributes those listings across a network of websites, putting those ads in front of the most appropriate audience available.

Advertisers are ONLY charged their bid amount when an interested customer clicks on a Sprinks listing and visits the advertiser's web site. You can open a Sprinks account for as little as $50. Every dollar will go towards your campaign. There is a minimum bid of $0.05 for KeywordSprinks™, and $0.20 for ContentSprinks™, LocalSprinks™ and DirectSprinks™ listings. On some occasions, Sprinks will discount minimum bids for particular topics or assign a premium minimum bid to special topics.