Pay Per Click (PPC)

Paid search is the hottest area of online marketing today and this trend is only going to strengthen. Piper Jaffray forecasts sales in paid search of over 14 Billion US in this year alone and will continue to grow at an astounding rate of 37% each year.

Google leads the way with its increasing share of paid search, primarily from its pay per click service, AdWords. Traditional media is losing its market share as ad dollars move to online marketing, and specifically the paid search arena. With this glut of dollars invading the paid space, unwary advertisers are at risk of making mistakes that can quietly consumer thousands of dollars.

Simple and Informative
Advertisers enjoy PPC advertising because it is simple, they have greater control over their ad campaign, and they receive better feedback on its performance. The growing importance of online marketing makes PPC an important arena for them to use and master and in fact, it's not uncommon for CEO's to do their own company's PPC campaigns.

The pay per click advertising programs with the greatest market reach are offered by Google and Yahoo. Google's program called AdWords delivers targeted pay per click ads via its own search engine Web sites and a host of partner sites.

Good Targeting and Timing
As you know, search engines return a list of web sites relevant to a person's keyword search. High rankings in the free (organic) search results is an exceptionally valuable achievement. However, with tens of thousands of web sites all competing for a keyword phrase ranking, it is difficult to rank highly for multiple keyword phrases.

Pay per click advertising on the other hand, allows you to get your web site listed on the results pages of an almost limitless number of keyword phrases. That kind of reach is incredibly powerful.