Also lucrative, especially for the ad servers. The biggest player in the online advertising space is Google. Google’s revenues for last year topped $33 billion. Ninety-seven per cent of that revenue came from online advertising.
Google AdWords works follows a fairly simple setup procedure, which includes: account setup; creating a new ad campaign; choosing one ore more keywords that your advertising will show up for; crafting your ad; setting a maximum budget and activating a campaign.
There are of course a few screens to get through to manage all of that. The online documentation is good though and there are hundreds of businesses that specialize in helping you run AdWords campaigns.
The purpose of these ads is essentially to bypass the hard work that goes into maintaining your website’s place at the top of the search results page for key words related to your business. Try practically any consumer product search on Google and ads will appear across the top and down the right hand side. These are paid placements. If you look carefully, you will see the word Ad discretely placed near these results.
This will cost you money, of course. The payment model for AdWords, at its simplest, is call pay per click (PPC). This means whenever someone clicks on your ad your account will be charged. This cost ranges from under five cents to over $50 per click. This is dependent on the popularity of the search keywords you are using.
You may not see the results you expect. AdWords campaigns are always a cycle of trial and error. You modify the keywords you are using. You try variations on the word of your ad. You can even change the landing page, the page on your website where clicking the ad will direct the user.
Carefully monitor the results you get over time. It is most economical to use AdWords for specific marketing campaigns, sales and special events.
As always, if you need some pointers, drop me a line.
Jon Reid is an IT professional working in Corner Brook. His column appears every other Tuesday in The Western Star.
