A Pay Per Click Primer

Writing by Pay Per Click Journal on Thursday, January 24, 2008 Comments (2)

SEO News ran a great article on pay per click advertising for beginners in today’s issue of its online news journal. I’d like to expand on some portions of it just a little.

In the early days of the Internet, website owners sold banner advertising to other webmasters. Banner advertising was the best form of advertising available then and just about anyone who wanted to make money on their website was doing this. Banner ads were all over the place and many webmasters built their businesses by exchanging banner ads with other website owners.

The flat fee model of advertising didn’t work for many website owners because it didn’t take long to figure out that most website visitors didn’t click on the banner ads. That meant that website owners were paying a large amount of money for each click to their websites from those banner ads. That’s why pay per click became such an attractive model when it was first developed. In 2000 and 2001, webmaster forums were hotly debating which model of advertising would win out in the end. A typical discussion was centered around the question, “Which advertising model is better for webmaster: Pay per click or banner ads?” It looks like PPC won.

When Yahoo! purchased Overture in 2003, it looked like Yahoo! would become the dominant player in PPC advertiser. Google was just getting started after having made its reputation with search results. Kalena Jordan’s history of PPC is very interesting, but she leaves out a lot of recent developments, including Yahoo!s demise and Google’s rise. While Yahoo! is still a competitor in PPC, though it is far from being so in search, one can’t help but notice that the search portal is losing ground there as well. Google seems to be much more adept at improving its products and Yahoo! seems to be better at falling on its face. I consider that a management problem.

Management issues aside, however, Yahoo! is still a player in the PPC industry. I highly recommend using the Yahoo! Search Marketing product simply because your ads will be seen by more people in more places than if you advertise with Google AdWords, though Google AdWords is a bit better in terms of helping you target your ads. It remains to be seen whether MSN adCenter will improve its PPC product enough to compete with Yahoo! and Google, but it is possible. I think the smaller companies are the ones you will need to watch in the next few years. Google will likely become the PPC company of choice for deep pockets. Smaller businesses that can’t afford the high bid prices at Google AdWords will have to go to Yahoo!, MSN, or one of the smaller companies.

The best that I can tell, companies with smaller budgets today are better off using long tail keyword bids at Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Miva. It won’t be long before anyone wanting to break into PPC advertising will have to hire an advocate to run their campaigns for them. It is becoming more and more difficult to run your own campaigns without losing money on the learning curve. But it will be worth it as organic search is increasingly becoming a game that costs more than the returns will produce.

Comments (2)                      Category: PPC Launch                      

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