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Article Title:
==============
A Comparison of Paid Search Advertising Models

Article Description:
====================
The most common advertising offer at the search engines is the 
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising model. There are also other 
search advertising models such as CPM (Cost Per Thousand 
Impressions) and Featured Listings. In this article, we will 
look at the advantages and disadvantages of each advertising 
method.


Additional Article Information:
===============================
1464 Words; formatted to 65 Characters per Line
Distribution Date and Time: Wed May  3 15:51:41 EDT 2006

Written By:     Bill Platt
Copyright:      2006
Contact Email:  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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http://thePhantomWriters.com/free_content/d/p/paid-search-advertising-review.shtml
 
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A Comparison of Paid Search Advertising Models
Copyright © 2006 Bill Platt
the Phantom Writers
http://thePhantomWriters.com



As webmasters, we are all chasing customers. We are looking for 
human visitors to come to our websites and to buy what we are 
selling.

To serve our needs for targeted traffic --- potential customers 
--- the search companies have begun to offer us a share of their 
significant traffic through many paid advertising methods.

The most common advertising offer at the search engines is the 
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising model. There are also other 
search advertising models such as CPM (Cost Per Thousand 
Impressions) and Featured Listings.

In this article, we will look at the advantages and disadvantages 
of each advertising method.


PPC (PAY-PER-CLICK) ADVERTISING MODEL

By far, PPC is currently the most popular advertising model. From 
the buyer's perspective, it is usually the most expensive type of 
advertising and the one that generates the most fear of fraud. In 
fact, many experts suggest that click-fraud might be as high as 
20 to 25% of all click-traffic.

Pay-Per-Click is exactly what it sounds like. The advertiser bids 
on keywords and tells the advertising company that they will pay 
X number of cents or dollars for every click that they receive to 
their website through the PPC-provider's website.

Advertisers compete for position within the search results with 
the highest bidder getting the best advertising spot at the top 
of the results. The second highest bidder gets the #2 spot, etc.

Generally, Pay-Per-Click providers serve three listings on 
the first page of search results. Only when there is strong 
competition for a particular keyword term and a number of 
advertisers vying for placement, will the PPC-provider show 
results with more than three advertisers.

If you bid the minimum five cents per click (the standard for 
most PPC systems), then it is possible that you might not see 
your listing on page one or page two of the search results. Let's 
face it; PPC providers are interested in making the most money 
they can from the traffic they send to people. So, if one 
advertiser is paying a dollar per click and you are only bidding 
five cents a click, who do you think will receive the best 
placement? Yep, the one-dollar per click advertiser will get 
the most attention and the best placement, even if it requires 
pushing your placement back to page three of the search results.

The top two PPC-providers are:

http://adwords.google.com/
http://www.content.overture.com/d/ - Now owned by Yahoo!

Other not-so-well-known providers of PPC traffic, in
alphabetical order, include:

http://www.411web.com/
http://www.7search.com/
http://www.abcsearch.com/
http://www.adbrite.com/
http://www.ask.com/
http://www.brainfox.com/
http://www.enhance.com/
http://www.kanoodle.com/
http://search.looksmart.com/
http://www.lycos.com/
http://www.miva.com/ - Formerly FindWhat.com
http://www.search123.com/
http://www.searchfeed.com/
http://turbo10.com/

The biggest advantage to these systems is that they serve large 
pools of consumers online, and they let you target specific 
search keywords.

The disadvantages are numerous. Those most often cited include: 
the high cost of  bids for certain keywords, poor conversion 
rates on purchased clicks, and click fraud (generally regarded 
as people clicking your link just so they can get paid for it).

Personally, I have paid as high as a dollar per-click for a 
service that sells for $35, and $20 in volume. I have spoken to 
others who operate for-profit websites and have paid as much as 
$2.50 per click on an average keyword. In some really competitive 
markets, people pay as much as $30 per click.

If you use the Web-Professor bid tool to check keywords at 
Overture ( http://web-professor.net/tools/bidstats/ ) and you 
type in the keyword "mesothelioma", you'll find 30 bidders vying 
for that term and a maximum bid of $29.88 per click! If the 
maximum bidder converts traffic to sales at the national average 
of 3%, then he or she is paying an average of $900 to get one 
client! Insane, but true.


CPM (COST PER THOUSAND IMPRESSIONS) ADVERTISING MODEL

CPM advertising is most often associated with banner advertising, 
but can now be purchased for text ads as well. This type of 
advertising is available from many sources, including:

http://adwords.google.com/
http://www.realtechnetwork.com/
http://www.joetec.net/

CPM advertising can be cheaper than PPC, but it fails to address 
the effectiveness of your advertising copy. Before undertaking 
a large CPM campaign, you need to be confident your advertising 
copy will deliver results.

As with any other type of advertising, you need to track click-
through and conversion rates to determine the advertising copy 
that is most effective for your business.

You also need to have a solid understanding of how many 
impressions it will take to generate a visitor, and how many 
visitors you will need to generate one sale. And, on the 
backside, you will need to know what the average earnings from 
your sales will be. With these stats in hand, you'll know how 
much you can afford to pay for CPM advertising or any other type 
of advertising.

Using Google Adwords, you can buy CPM advertising for as little 
as $2 per thousand impressions. The one time I went that route, 
thinking my advertising might be cheaper, I ended up dropping 
$180 in three days with only one sale to show for my investment -
-- utilizing the exact same ad that generated a 4% click-through 
rate (CTR) in Google's PPC advertising system.

The major appeal of CPM advertising is its perceived low-cost, 
with rates ranging between $2 - $3 per thousand impressions.

The major disadvantage to this type of advertising is that you 
need a good handle on how well your advertising is performing. 
Your advertising copy can make or break you. Additionally, you 
need to keep an eye on your advertising budget. From first hand 
experience, I can tell you that although CPM advertising can 
appear inexpensive, it can in short order surpass the costs of 
PPC advertising.


FEATURED LISTING ADVERTISING MODEL

Featured listings differ from the other two advertising models 
in that you do not pay for "ad clicks" or "ad impressions". With 
featured listings, your advertisement appears in the purchased 
location for 30 days, 90 days, or one year.

Featured listings can be bought on individual websites and even 
on networks of websites. Below are a few examples of advertising 
networks that offer featured listings:


Geek Files ( http://www.geekfiles.com/advertising/ )

Geek Files offers various Featured Listing placement options with 
ad rates ranging from $19 to $179 per month. You get two months 
free if you buy advertising for a full year.


Aardvark Travel ( http://www.aardvarktravel.net/featured/ )

Aardvark Travel is a travel search engine. Featured listings 
appear in a colored box between the top five listings and the 
bottom five listings in the travel-related search results. There 
is a $50 setup fee for each Featured Listing and a $10 per month 
recurring charge for as long as you keep your listing active. 
Aardvark claims featured listings generate 40 times more clicks 
than any other listings on their pages.


The Independent Search Engine & Directory Network 
( http://www.isedn.org/ )

The ISEDN offers a program that allows you to purchase Top Ten 
exposure for your website(s) across their network of 200 plus 
member websites.

The network is comprised of specialized search engines, search 
directories, and article directories. Featured Listing placements 
for specific keywords are displayed across the entire ISEDN 
system.

The cost of a keyword term (the word or phrase associated with 
the listing) is $12 for three months or $36 for 12 months. The 
price drops for each additional 5 listings you purchase. If you 
are buying in volume, discounts can be significant. For example, 
the cost for 16 to 100 listings is $6 per listing for 3 months 
and $18 per listing for 12 months.

The main drawback to the ISEDN program is that the network, 
although large, does not yet have the traffic volume of the major 
engines.

The major benefit, of course, is that you can buy a lot more bang 
for your advertising dollars. Additionally, you can see your ads 
appearing on pages in a position that will attract more attention 
and click-through traffic to your website.


WHICH ADVERTISING MODEL IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

It really depends on your business model. More so, it depends on 
your absolute click-through averages and your website conversion 
rates.

Your advertising needs to cost you no more than what it earns for 
you. Ideally, your advertising will cost less than it earns for 
you.

Some businesses trade on the lifetime value of customers and are 
willing to pay more to get customers than what they earn on their 
first sale, but not all of us can afford to build a customer base 
in the same way that Amazon built theirs.

If your advertising budget is small, your goal should be to make 
every advertising dollar count. Grow your business to the point 
where you might be able to afford some of the more expensive 
advertising solutions. But then, if the lower-cost solutions 
generate sales for you, why would you want to pay more?




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ARTICLE TIP: The About the Author information that follows an 
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