Advantages and Disadvantages of Paid Search (PPC)
Posted on 05. Mar, 2009 by SearchGeeks in Pay Per Click
“Pay per click” marketing, also known as PPC, is an internet ad term. “Pay per click” simply means that a host site is not paid unless an advertiser’s ad is clicked upon. Some notable PPC search engines include Yahoo!, Google, and Ask.com. The Goliath among the pack is MSN adCenter. You’ve probably noticed when using these sites that some ads are run under the banner, “sponsored ads”: These are the pay per click advertisers.
Advantages of Pay Per Click - PPC
All in all, PPC can be a very effective marketing tool. It can be beneficial in the sense that advertisers are continually noticed by a target audience, but they only have to pay when the ad is clicked on. Web users may also find it beneficial too, as they do not have to sort through a mountain of returned data to find credible web sites without annoying banners and flash ads.
PPC works in quite an interesting way. After writing an ad, a company will bid on keywords that correspond to it. When a user types a query that matches the keywords paid for in the advertisers bid, the sponsored ad will pop up. If the user then decides to click on the ad, the search engine gets paid the bid price.
Disadvantages of Pay Per Click - PPC
Although Pay Per Click can be one of the most affordable forms of advertising on the internet, there are some instances where PPC can be disadvantageous. When using popular search words, a bidding war may ensue among advertisers. While you don’t want to end up at the bottom of the list, you certainly don’t want to spend all your money outbidding competitors. To determine if a PPC marketing strategy is right for your company, divide the profit you make on a website over a period of time by the total number of visitors in that time period. You will want to be paying less for each hit than the final calculation.