What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC)?

Pay-per-click represents a simple negotiation system between a web publisher and an advertiser. internet. In PPC advertisers do not pay for the total number of impressions or views but pay only when a visitor comes to your website by clicking on the advertisement. Pay-per-Click (PPC) is part of every web businesses life. It is has a lot to do with the way that online marketing is progressing, and over the years it has replaced banner, affiliates advertising which was the norm in the past. PPC is part of everybody’s
life now.

PPC became very popular with the start of goto.com which now is Overture. Now it has grown many-fold with hundreds of companies which provide general and other advertising opportunities. Pay-per-click has become even bigger than pay-per-impression advertising. The following are currently available PPC options.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords is by far the most popular option these days. AdWords is a Google service that started with displaying ads next to the results given by the search query. Google then extended their PPC program to include contextual ads which includes Google AdSense, which allowd even small publishers to display contextual ads on their websites. These contextual ads are basically the AdWords results.

The Google AdWords algorithm depends upon various alogorithms which mainly go by the following two thumb rules: i) the clickthrough of the advert and ii) the amount that the advertisers specifies per each
click. Adverts that have clickthrough rates lower than 0.5% (approx) are classified as untargeted and are automatically removed by the system the clickthrough results refer only to search engine impressions and not to the websites which use contextual advertisements as the clickthrough rates for Adsense can be much lower till about 0.002%.

There is a $5 activation fees which are applicable when you open an AdWords account. The minimum cost per click in AdWords is one cent, but for competitive keywords the value can reach very high values (up to $100). These are premium keywords and can be exploited to generate false revenue for the publishers. As you can see 100 dollars is not a small amount. Google AdWords can offer you large amount of targeted traffic as it is the worlds most widely used search engine with millions of users every day. However, the
large competition in AdWords keywords and the small conversion rates for contextual advertising make its use forbidding for many small business owners. Site-targeted ads require a minimum CPM price of US$0.25, per 1000 impressions.

Overture (Now Yahoo! Search marketing)

Overture is in a sense the company that started all this or at least made it popular. It has currently lost a lot of ground due to the introduction of Adwords, but the acquisition of Overture by Yahoo! about two years ago and the adoption of contextual advertising (Context Match) programs and now the Yahoo! Publisher Network, which is in the Beta stage at the moment have revived the services offered by Overture. Overture results are currently being displayed in Yahoo!, MSN, Dogpile, AltaVista, CNET, NBCI, and many more. With Overture you can bid for rankings and also choose the description and title of your websiite. You can control your bids at all times and change them, based on the quality of your results. Particularly handy is the Search Term Suggestion Tool, which shows you how often people search for a particular word or phrase. Minimum bid for Overture is 10 cents per click but there is also a clause where you need to utilize at least $20 from your funds. It takes about 5 business days to get listed. Bidding and displaying of the results is simpler in Overture than in AdWords. The results are displayed in order of the bid size and there is no ‘popularity’ factor as in AdWords. There is an advantage in Overture of being ‘top bidder’ for your keywords as the top bidder gets more prominence in more websites and search engines than the lowest bidders. Naturally this means that the expenses of the bidders in Overture are quite high ? but not as high as in AdWords. Keyword rates are comparable with AdWords and there are hundreds of advertisers that pledge by Overture.

Miva (originally known as Findwhat.com)

Obviously much smaller than either Overture or Adwords, but Miva is a very good alternative to the search engine PPC and contextual PPC. Miva.com distributes your keyword text ads throughout a distribution partner network of hundreds of high-traffic websites including large search engines such as CNET’s Search.com, Excite, Webcrawler, MetaCrawler, Dogpile and Microsoft Internet Explorer Autosearch. They also partner with specialty sites serving niche markets in order to drive the most targeted traffic to your website. Minimum bid is again five cents per click but click rates are much lower here than Adwords or Overture. Unfortunately the number of clicks is much lower as well, so you will not get as much traffic out of Miva as you would out of Overture or AdWords. In order to activate the Miva account you need to place a deposit of $25 which is used for the first clicks of your campaign. Now there is also a Miva (UK) which can be used by United Kingdom advertisers and publishers.

LookSmart

LookSmart will do a deep categorization of your web site, in return for a per click charge of generally between 15 to 75 cents for every visitor that they send to you, with those in more competitive markets paying higher fees. The program has a $1,000 minimum spend per month, with a three month minimum, so this isn’t aimed at small business. In addition to this, LookSmart will now also give all your listings a ranking boost, a significant change than from its old program. This only happens within LookSmart.com and sites that rebrand LookSmart’s exact listings. Results appear on MSN, AltaVista, iWon, Time Warner, Prodigy, Juno, Netscape, Qwest, Go2Net, Mamma.com, plus Inktomi and their entire network.

Kanoodle

Kanoodle is also an alternative and is on the same par as Miva. It has partnered with NetZero, DogPile, CNET, Metacrawler and Turbofind. Minimum bid is again five cents per click and click rates are similar to those from Miva. Again the amount of traffic you will expect out of Miva can definitely not be compared to the traffic from Adwords or Overture but the results for specialized keywords or for keywords which have a lot of competition in Adwords or Overture can be extremely good. Your Kanoodle.com account also allows your listings to be seen on search engines and sites like Galaxy.com, 37.com as well as 10,000 other search enabled sites!

7Search

7Search has a minimum bid of one penny and require a minimum $25 deposit to start bidding. If paying by credit, your bids will be live immediately upon submitting your credit card number unless you are from outside the US, in which case your bid prices will be activated upon credit card approval. Services offered to advertisers include immediate e-mail notification when you are outbid for the top ranking on a keyword, a keyword generator tool, and a 1:1 banner exchange program. 7Search has over 30 million searches per month. Search results appear in 7Search affiliate network and over 35% of search engines in English speaking countries.

Pay-per-click advertising is remarkable in the fact that it allows for the easiest possible tracking of its results in ways that even a beginner can follow and he/she can understand the progress of his/her current PPC campaigns, correct the ones that seem to be going badly and improve the ones that are already giving excellent results.

What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC)?

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