In: Root » Business » Affiliate Advertising » Most search engines offer more than one way to place paid search ads
WHAT ARE MY SEARCH MARKETING OPTIONS?Most search engines offer more than one way to place paid search ads on their networks. Text ads are the most common and the most effective, but some networks also allow you to place image ads, though I haven’t had any success at all with them myself. When it comes to search marketing, a picture is definitely not worth a thousand words. Whatever type of ads you do run, however, you need to be aware of the venues for running them. The most common choices are search networks and content networks, so we should take a moment to describe them both. Search NetworksWe all know what a search engine is by now, but did you know that not all search pages are powered by their own search engine? Many search pages, and web sites with search functions, are powered not by their own search engines but by another search engine they partner up with to provide these search capabilities to their clients. CNN’s web site, for instance, offers a search function powered by Yahoo! Those web sites that partner with a search engine to provide these services are part of that search engine’s search network. When you run an ad on a search network, that ad could be displayed in the search results on hundreds of different search pages. Some search engines, like Google for instance, allow you to opt in or opt out of their search network, which allows you to run your ad either on just the Google search pages or on all their partner search pages as well. Content NetworksContent networks work a little differently from search engines. When you run your ad on a content network, it is not showing up in a list of search results in response to search terms matching the keywords or phrases you bid on. Instead, your ad is shown on web sites whose content matches the keywords you bid on. For example, if you are promoting an affiliate program for a jobs site and you bid on the keyword resume, your ad might appear on a web site dedicated to resume building. Some search engines (I’ll use Google again as an example) will allow you to opt in or opt out of their content networks the same way you can opt in or out of their search networks, and they will even allow you to place separate bids for ads running on their content network. Google also offers you the flexibility of choosing exactly which content sites your ads appear on and has even offered, instead of the pay-per-click model, a pay-per-impression program, or CPM, in which advertisers pay a fixed cost for each 1,000 times an ad is shown on the Web page or pages where it appears. Some content networks, including Google, give search marketers the option to advertise by CPM, but I generally advise against it. The CPM payment model is not tied to a measurable performance metric and is more commonly used to slowly build or maintain a level of brand recognition among a specific audience rather than to generate an immediate return on your investment. The pay-per-click bidding system allows you to control your costs and keep your spending levels below your expected returns. This is much more difficult to accomplish under a payper- impression system, and I recommend you avoid it. Content networks can be a good source of additional traffic, but not in all instances. In fact, I have had only one really successful content campaign in the few years I have been doing this. It earned nearly a thousand dollars a day for me while it lasted, so I encourage you to try these now and then, but be aware that it may be slightly more difficult to build profitable campaigns on the content networks than on the search networks. |
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