Pay per click advertising and display advertising are like two legs of a three-legged step stool (the fourth leg is SEO). You really need all three legs to stand up and stay balanced. PPC can be used to brand your business and I highly recommend it, but display advertising also has its advantages.

The difference between pay per click and display advertising is that display advertising is advertising you pay for whether it is effective in getting clicks or not. But clicks may not be your goal. You may just want to get your name brand in front of eyeballs and that’s a valid goal.

Branding online works the same way it does off line. You are simply placing your brand where you want to be in the marketplace. Online branding has become an essential part of doing business on the Web and if you do it right then you can make your display advertising efforts compliment your PPC campaigns for a total branding experience.

Should you stick entirely to search advertising or incorporate display advertising into your marketing plan? Should you do one or the other, or both?

I believe you should be doing both. Search advertising is very effective, but you cannot successfully brand yourself without also including some banner, or display, advertising.

First, you need to know your target market. Who are they? Where do they hang out? What are they looking for? If you know the mindset, the language, and the preferences of your target market you’ll be a lot more successful in online marketing no matter what kind of advertising you employ.

Secondly, establish your goals. Knowing your goals is important because if you don’t define them then you can’t reach them. Do you know what you want your advertising to do for you? Advertising is generally done to qualify leads and send them to your website. Both search advertising and display advertising are effective in doing this.

It is easier to write your search ads before designing your display advertising. Your graphic designer will need to know some things before he or she can design your display ads. By writing your search ads first, you define your marketing campaign and give your branding team a frame of reference from which to start.

If you have search ads and display ads on the same website, put them in the same general area of the site. You will be much more effective this way.

Finally, the key to all kinds of advertising is testing. Don’t be afraid to try different things. Some things you think won’t be successful will be very successful. Other things that you think will be quite successful won’t make the grade. Be sure to test different ads, different landing page, and different placements for your ads. You can be successful with online advertising if you incorporate search advertising with display advertising.

Will social networks ever figure out how to make pay per click advertising work for them? An article by Janet Meiners sheds some light on the subject at Market Pilgrim.

I haven’t used SocialMedia Networks so I can’t speak to their offerings, but I agree with Janet that you have to figure out how to make your ads within the social network appealing to the users of those networks, who are more often than not turned off by the traditional display advertising model.

StumbleUpon seems to have done this well. For 5 cents per click, advertisers can target their advertising to particular groups or types of users. But you can also advertise by video on SU, not a unique idea but one that works for StumbleUpon.

One thing is for sure: If you are going to advertise on the social networks, you need to know your audience.

Now that Google has completed its acquisition of DoubleClick, they’re ready to start helping advertisers advertise and publishers publish. No sooner was the ink dry on the deal than Google announced its new Ad Manager.

Right now it’s in beta and participation is by invitation only, but I don’t think that will last long. Probably six months at most. Google will probably start taking open applications as soon as they feel comfortable that the bugs have been worked out and that could be as early as three months. Even now, they’ll take requests for participation from webmasters just dying to get in on the ground floor.

I see Ad Manager and a Google-owned DoubleClick catching on pretty fast. Google has already taken a lead in contextual advertising, pay-per-video, audio advertising, and now has gotten into print advertising. The way Google does things, it is inconceivable that it won’t sink a lot of resources into the lucrative display advertising field. Just take a look at the features Ad Manager offers and tell me you don’t think this will be a hot product:

# Inventory management
# Yield optimization
# Ad targeting
# Trafficking, ad delivery, and order booking
# Creatives and rich media management
# Reporting
# User interface
# Administration

I’m really looking forward to this one. Savvy webmasters will learn quickly how to make it pay.