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Pay per click advertising
Google has extended its pay per action advertising (PPA) beta test. Google's Rob Kniaz told MediaPost that the "Most advertisers have a specific number of conversions, or a specific ROI they're looking for, and the PPA model can bring those two together."Late last year the number one online retailer, Amazon.com, lifted the lid on its new auction-based pay per click (PPC) Marketing program, reinforcing the importance of this form of online advertising.
How does pay per click advertising work?
The notion of pay per click (or cost per click/CPC) is central to most Internet Advertising campaigns, and the process itself is pretty straightforward.Using the power of the internet to its full potential, pay per click ads are small text advertisements that require the advertiser to pay only when a user actually clicks on the link that takes them through to the relevant website.
Google AdWords - pay per click (pay per action beta testing)
They are often displayed alongside the search results on search pages - for example, the Google AdWords program (the largest on the internet) shows ads next to its results following a user search.
Other programs display the ads on actual websites, allowing website owners to reap a large amount of revenue from very little outlay.
Other major PPC programs are Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft's adCenter, as well as those operated by smaller players like Ask, Kanoodle and Baidu.
Keyword PPCs
The process often involves advertisers bidding on popular keywords or Key Phrases. When a search is carried out by a user, the advertiser who bid the largest amount for the key term searched for will display at the top of the list of advertisers.Obviously, it will cost far more to bid for popular keywords such as "cheap car insurance" than something extremely niche such as "Yellow dog jackets".
Product and service pay per click
Advertisers are also able to place feeds of their product databases on certain "product engine" websites, meaning
that users can search through various products and sort through according to price. Within certain categories, the highest bidders will appear at the top. These websites include Shopzilla and Shopping.com.
Also, "service" engines, like TripAdvisor, allow advertisers to place feeds of their databases on them, which users can then search through.
The availability of pay per click advertising
The beauty of pay per click is that, once set up, it requires the advertiser to do very little and keywords can cost as little as $0.01. Even small businesses or individuals with blogs can make use of this groundbreaking technology.Online Advertising news posted on 21 June 2007
