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Online Advertising
Reference Section @ BillDoll.com – The Billion Dollar Site
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Online Advertising
Topics
Formats - Banner Advertising (Web Banner), Text Advertising, Contextual Advertising Types – Cost Per Action, Pay Per Click (Click-through Rate), Cost Per Impression, Online Affiliate Marketing, Opt-in Advertising Strategies - Search Engine Marketing
??Online Advertising - Online Advertising Network
Content derived from Wikipedia article on Click-through Rate
Click-through rate or CTR is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. A CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad on a web page by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). For example, if your banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and 1 person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1%.
Banner ad click-through rates have fallen over time, often measuring significantly less than 1%. By selecting an appropriate advertising site with high affinity (e.g. a movie magazine for a movie advertisement), the same banner can achieve a substantially higher click-through rate. Personalized ads, unusual formats, and more obtrusive ads typically have higher click-through rates than standard banner ads.
CTR is most commonly defined as number of clicks divided by number of impressions and generally not in terms of number of persons who clicked. This is an important difference because if one person clicks 10 times on the same advertisement instead of once then the CTR would increase in the earlier definition but would stay the same in term of later definition.
References:
Sherman, Lee and John Deighton, (2001), "Banner advertising: Measuring effectiveness and optimizing placement," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Spring, Vol. 15, Iss. 2.
End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_Through_Rate
Content derived from Wikipedia article on Cost per Action
Cost Per Action or CPA (as it is often initialized to) is a phrase often used in online advertising and online marketing circles.
CPA is considered the optimal form of buying online advertising from the advertiser's point of view. An advertiser only pays for the ad when an action has occurred. An action can be a product being purchased, a form being filled, etc. (The desired action to be performed is determined by the advertiser.) Google has incorporated this model into their Google AdSense [1] offering while eBay has recently announced a similar pricing called AdContext.
A related term, eCPA or effective Cost Per Action, is used to measure the effectiveness of advertising inventory purchased (by the advertiser) via a CPC, CPM, or CPT basis.
The CPA can be determined by different factors, depending where the online advertising inventory is being purchased.
Other common forms, of charging for advertising, include: CPC, CPM, CPT
Related Topics: eCPA, Cost per Conversion
End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_Per_Action
Content derived from Wikipedia article on Pay Per Click
Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines.
Advertisers bid on "keywords" that they believe their target market (people they think would be interested in their offer) would type in the search bar when they are looking for their type of product or service. For example, if an advertiser sells red widgets, he/she would bid on the keyword "red widgets", hoping a user would type those words in the search bar, see their ad, click on it and buy. These ads are called "sponsored links" or "sponsored ads" and appear next to and sometimes above the natural or organic results on the page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad.
While many companies exist in this space, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing, which was formerly Overture, are the largest network operators as of 2006. MSN has started beta testing with their own PPC services MSN adCenter. Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0.01 (up to US$0.50). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Abuse of the pay per click model can result in click fraud.
Categories
PPC engines can be categorized in "Keyword", "Product", "Service" engines. However, a number of companies may fall in two or more categories. More models are continually being developed. Currently, pay per click programs do not generate any revenue from site traffic to sites using these programs. Only when visitors click on banner advertisements or pop-ups is revenue generated.
Keyword PPCs
Advertisers using these bid on "keywords", which can be words or phrases, and can include product model numbers. When a user searches for a particular word or phrase, the list of advertiser links appears in order of bidding. Keywords, also referred to as search terms, are the very heart of Pay per Click advertising. The terms are guarded as highly valuable trade secrets by the advertisers, and many firms offer software or services to help advertisers develop these invaluable words...
As of 2005, notable PPC Keyword search engines include: Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), Microsoft adCenter, LookSmart, Miva (formerly FindWhat), Ask Jeeves, 7Search, Kanoodle, and Baidu.
Product PPCs
"Product" engines let advertisers provide "feeds" of their product databases and when users search for a product, the links to the different advertisers for that particular product appear, giving more prominence to advertisers who pay more, but letting the user sort by price to see the lowest priced product and then click on it to buy. These engines are also called Product comparison engines or Price comparison engines.
Noteworthy PPC Product search engines are: BizRate.com, Shopzilla.com, NexTag, PriceGrabber.com, and Shopping.com.
Service PPCs
"Service" engines let advertisers provide feeds of their service databases and when users search for a service offering links to advertisers for that particular service appear, giving prominence to advertisers who pay more, but letting users sort their results by price or other methods. Some Product PPCs have expanded into the service space while other service engines operate in specific verticals.
Noteworthy PPC services include NexTag, SideStep, and TripAdvisor.
Pay per call
Similar to pay per click, pay per call is a business model for ad listings in search engines and directories that allows publishers to charge local advertisers on a per-call basis for each lead (call) they generate. The term "pay per call" is sometimes confused with "click to call". Click-to-call, along with call tracking, is a technology that enables the “pay-per-call” business model.
Pay-per-call is not just restricted to local advertisers. Many of the pay-per-call search engines allows advertisers with a national presence to create ads with local telephone numbers.
According to the Kelsey Group, the pay-per-phone-call market is expected to reach US$3.7 billion by 2010.
End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_Per_Click
Content derived from Wikipedia article on Cost Per Impression
Cost Per Impression is a phrase often used in online advertising and marketing related to web traffic. It is used for measuring the worth and cost of a specific e-marketing campaign. This technique is applied with web banners, text links, e-mail spam, and opt-in e-mail advertising, although opt-in e-mail advertising is more commonly charged on a Cost Per Action (CPA) basis.
The Cost Per Impression is often measured using the CPM (Cost Per Mille) metric. (A CPM is the cost of one thousand (1,000) impressions.)
CPM is considered the optimal form of selling online advertising from the publisher's point of view. A publisher gets paid for each ad that is shown.
This type of advertising arrangement closely resembles Television and Print Advertising Methods for speculating the cost of an Advertisement. Often, industry agreed approximates are used. With Television the Nielsen Ratings are used and Print is based on the circulation a publication has.
For Online Advertising, the numbers of views can be a lot more precise. When a user requests a Web Pages, the originating server creates a log entry. Also, a third party tracker can be placed in the web page which will verify how many accesses that page had.
CPM and/or Flat rate advertising deals are preferred by the Publisher/Webmaster because they will get paid regardless of any action taken.
For Advertisers a Performance Based system is preferred. There are two methods for Paying for Performance: 1) CPA - Cost per Action/Acquisition and 2) CPC - Cost per Click Through.
Today, it is very common for large publishers to charge for most of their advertising inventory on a CPM or Cost Per Time (CPT) basis.
A related term, eCPM or effective Cost Per Mille, is used to measure the effectiveness of advertising inventory sold (by the publisher) via a CPC, CPA, or CPT basis.
Cost Per Mille
The initialization CPM comes from print world (and is a latin word), and stands for Cost Per Mille in the US or, more correctly, in the UK Cost Per M, with M representing the Roman numeral for thousand. When online advertising started gaining momentum, those in the industry used this term (rather than something like CPI) as a metric for describing the Cost Per Impression largely because advertisers were already familiar with the term CPM.
It is important to remember that when someone says something like, "our CPM is $5". That this means that the Cost Per Impression is $0.005 -- half a cent.
End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_Per_Impression
Content derived from Wikipedia article on Advertising Network
An advertising network (also called an online advertising network or ad network) is a collection of (often unrelated) online advertising inventory.
Online advertising inventory comes in many different forms. This inventory can be found on websites, in instant messaging applications, in adware, in e-mails, and on other sources. Some examples of advertising inventory include: banner ads, rich media, text links, and e-mails. (This is not an exhaustive list.)
Large publishers often sell only their remnant inventory through ad networks. Typical numbers range from 10% to 60% of total inventory being remnant and sold through advertising networks.
Smaller publishers often sell all of their inventory through ad networks. One type of ad network, known as a blind network, is such that advertisers place ads, but do not know the exact places where their ads are being placed.
In most cases, ad networks deliver their content through the use of a central ad server.
Large ad networks
Large ad networks include a mixture of search engines, media companies, and technology vendors. Some of the larger networks include: 24/7 Real Media 7Search Ad-Up AdBrite Adtegrity Advertising.com BidClix Burst Media Casale Media CPASE CPX Interactive Direct Network Federated Media Publishing FeedBurner GenieKnows.com Google's AdWords and AdSense Gorilla Nation Hydra Network Kanoodle's BrightAds Microsoft adCenter MIVA Oridian Right Media Rydium Specific Media Text Link Ads Tribal Fusion Undertone Networks ValueClick Yahoo! Search Marketing
A new breed of ad network, serving one industry specifically, is beginning to arrive: Syndasound - Record labels, independent musicians
End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_network
Content derived from Wikipedia article on Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is a popular method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through her efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying a finder's fee for the introduction of new clients to a business. Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (Pay per click), registrant (Pay per lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay per sale), or any combination.
Merchants like affiliate marketing because it is a "pay for performance model", meaning the merchant does not incur a marketing expense unless results are realized.
Some e-commerce sites run their own affiliate programs while other e-commerce vendors use third party services provided by intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates. Some businesses owe much of their growth and success to this marketing technique, although research has shown in general the increase to be approximately 15-20% of online revenue.
Merchants who are considering adding an affiliate strategy to their online sales channel should research the different technological solutions available to them. Some types of affiliate management solutions include: standalone software, hosted services, shopping carts with affiliate features, and third party affiliate networks.
Revenue generated online grew quickly. The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the web, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business. Many companies hired outside affiliate management companies to manage the affiliate program (see outsourced program management.) Today, affiliate marketing is the single fastest growth industry on the Internet. It’s also true that affiliate marketing is one of the fastest and most creative ways to make money and have a career on the Internet.
In fact, research shows that affiliate marketing is the most cost-effective way to generate online sales. As per market statistics, affiliate marketing in terms of total sales generated mainly through the affiliate networks, was worth close to a billion in the UK alone, combining the figures for the last two years. This of course is excluding white label and self-administered schemes. Besides, the affiliate solution providers confidently expect their own revenues to grow between 50%-75% in 2005-2006, and also confidently expect their own revenues to grow between 40%-75%.
Currently the most active sectors for affiliate marketing are the adult, gambling and retail sectors. The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth in affiliate marketing are the mobile phone, finance and travel sectors. A lot of different offers from various Advertisers are available to pick from. It only takes a look at the increase in size of affiliate directories[1] to realize that Affiliate Programs are not a novelty anymore, but standard. Hot on the heels of these are the entertainment (particularly gaming) and internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors. Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from B2B marketers and advertisers in using affiliate marketing as part of their mix. Of course, this is constantly subject to change.
Multi Tier Programs
Some advertisers offer multi-tier programs that distribute commission into a hierarchical referral network of sign-ups and sub-partners. In practical terms: publisher "A" signs up to the program with an advertiser and gets rewarded for the agreed activity conducted by a referred visitor. If publisher "A" attracts other publishers ("B", "C", etc.) to sign up for the same program using her sign-up code all future activities by the joining publishers "B" and "C" will result in additional, lower commission for publisher "A".
Snowballing, this system rewards a chain of hierarchical publishers who may or may not know of each others' existence, yet generate income for the higher level signup. This sort of structure has been successfully implemented by a company called Quixtar.com, a division of Amway. Quixtar has implemented a network marketing structure to implement its marketing program for major corporations such as Barnes & Noble, Office Depot, Sony Music and hundreds more. This is not considered affiliate marketing. Two-tier programs exist in the minority of affiliate programs; most are simply one-tier. Programs beyond 2-tier are not considered affiliate programs, but rather Multi-level_marketing (MLM) or network marketing.
Types of Affiliate Sites
Affiliate sites are often categorized by merchants (Advertisers) and Affiliate networks. The main categories are:
Search affiliates that utilize Pay per click search engines to promote the advertisers offers
Comparison shopping sites and directories
Loyalty sites, typically characterized by providing a reward system for purchases via points back, cash back or charitable donations
Coupon and rebate sites that focus on Sales promotions
Content and niche sites
Personal Websites (this type of sites were the reason for the birth of Affiliate Marketing, but are today almost reduced to complete irrelevance compared to the other types of affiliate sites)
Affiliate Marketing and Web 2.0
The rise of blogging, interactive online communities and other new technologies, web sites and services based on the concepts that are now called Web 2.0 have impacted the affiliate marketing world as well. The new media allowed merchants to get closer to their affiliates and improved communication between each other.
New developments have made it harder for unscrupulous affiliates to make money. Emerging black sheep are detected and made known to the affiliate marketing community with much greater speed and efficiency.
A Brief History of Affiliate Marketing
This is a citation from the book "Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants"[2] which describes how affiliate marketing on the internet came into being. It was written in a casual form which does not diminish its factual accuracy.
As the story goes, affiliate marketing all started at a cocktail party. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com (www.amazon.com), was chatting with a party guest who wanted to sell books on her web site.
This got Bezos thinking. Why not have the woman link her site to Amazon’s and receive a commission on the books that she sold? Soon after, Amazon introduced the "Amazon Associates Program". It was a simple idea. Amazon associates would place banner or text links on their site for individual books or link directly to the Amazon’s home page.
When visitors clicked from the associate’s site through to Amazon.com and purchased a book, the associate received a commission. With that thought, Bezos created Amazon.com’s affiliate program in July 1996.
But Amazon wasn’t the first company to initiate an affiliate program. According to Brad Waller, VP of affiliate and business development for EPage (www.epage.com), the affiliate program for EPage started in April 1996. As documented in “The CDNow Story: Rags to Riches on the Internet,” CDNow’s affiliate program predates Amazon’s by more than a year.
In November 1994, almost a full year before Amazon.com even launched its web site, the venerable CDNow (www.cdnow.com) began its buyweb program. With its buyweb program, CDNow was the first to introduce the concept of an affiliate or associate program with its idea of click-through purchasing through independent, online storefronts.
It worked like this.
CDNow had the idea that music-oriented web sites could review or list albums on their pages that their visitors might be interested in purchasing and offer a link that would take the visitor directly to CDNow to purchase them. The idea for this remote purchasing originally arose as a result of conversations with a music publisher called Geffen Records (www.geffen.com) in the fall of 1994. The management at Geffen Records wanted to sell its artists’ CDs directly from its site but didn’t want to do it itself. Geffen Records asked CDNow if it could design a program where CDNow would do the fulfillment.
Geffen Records realized that CDNow could link directly from the artist on its Web site to Geffen’s web site, bypassing the CDNow home page and going directly to an artist’s music page. By linking Geffen Records to CDNow, the affiliate marketing format was born.
End of Citation.
Compensation Models
The following compensation models are relevant for affiliate marketing.
Pay-per-impression (PPI) / Cost-per-thousand (CPM)
Cost-per-mil (mil/mille/M = latin/Roman numeral for thousand) impressions. Publisher gets from Advertiser $x.xx amount of money for every 1000 impressions (page views/displays) of the Ad. The Ad can be text (AdSense), banner image or rich media.
Pay-per-click (PPC) / Cost-per-click (CPC)
Cost-per-click. Advertiser pays publisher $x.xx amount of money, every time a visitor (potential prospect) clicks on the advertiser's Ad. It is irrelevant (for the compensation) how often an Ad is displayed. commission is only due when the Ad is clicked. See also click fraud.
Pay-per-lead (PPL) / Cost-per-action/acquisition (CPA) / Cost-per-lead CPL)
Cost-per-action or Cost-per-acquisition (CPA), Cost-per-Lead (CPL). Advertiser pays publisher $x.xx in commission for every visitor that was referred by the publisher to the advertiser (web site) and performs a desired action, such as filling out a form, creating an account or signing up for a newsletter. This compensation model is very popular with online services from internet service providers, cell phone providers, banks (loans, mortgages, credit cards) and subscription services.
Pay-per-sale (PPS) / Cost-per-sale (CPS)
Cost-per-sale (CPS). Advertiser pays the publisher a percentage (%) of the order amount (sale) that was created by a customer who was referred by the publisher. This model is by far the most common compensation model used by online retailers that have an affiliate program.
Pay-per-call
This is a new compensation model. No official abbreviation exist yet. Advertiser pays publisher a $x.xx commission for phone calls received from potential prospects as response to a specific publisher Ad. Recently developed call-tracking technology allows to create a bridge between online and offline advertising. Pay-per-call advertising is still new and in its infancy.
Finding Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs directories are one way to find affiliate programs, another one are large Affiliate networks that provide the platform for dozens or even hundreds of Advertisers.
Program Management Outsourcing
Successful affiliate programs require a lot of maintenance and work. The number of affiliate programs just a few years back was much smaller than it is today. Having an affiliate program that is successful is not as easy anymore. The days when programs could generate considerable revenue for the merchant even if they were poorly or not at all managed ("auto-drive") is over.
Those uncontrolled programs were one of the reasons why some of the not so positive examples of affiliates were able to do what they did (spamming, trademark infringement, false advertising, "cookie cutting", typosquatting etc.).
The increase of number of internet businesses in combination with the increased number of people that trust the current technology enough to do shopping and business online caused and still causes a further maturing of affiliate marketing. The opportunities to generate considerable amount of profit in combination with a much more crowded marketplace filled with about equal quality and sized competitors made it harder for merchants to get noticed, but at the same time the rewards if you get noticed much larger.
Internet advertising industry became much more professional and online media is in some areas closing the gap to offline media, where advertising is highly professional and very competitive for a lot of years already. The requirements to be successful are much higher than they were in the past. Those requirements are becoming often too much of a burden for the merchant to do it successfully in-house. More and more merchants are looking for alternative options which they find in relatively new outsourced (affiliate) program management or OPM companies that were often founded by veteran affiliate managers and network program managers.
The OPM are doing this highly specialized job of affiliate program management for the merchant as a service agency very much like Ad agencies are doing the job to promote a brand or product in the offline world today.
Past and Current Affiliate Marketing Issues
In the early days of affiliate marketing, there was very little control over what affiliates were doing, which was abused by a large number of affiliates. Affiliates used false advertisements, forced clicks to get tracking cookies set on users' computers, and adware, which displays ads on computers. Many affiliate programs were poorly managed.
Trademark Bidding / PPC
Affiliates were among the earliest adopters of Pay-per-click advertising when the first PPC search engines like goto.com (which became later Overture.com, acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) emerged during the end of the nineteen-nineties. Later in 2000 did Google launch their PPC service AdWords which is responsible for the wide spread use and acceptance of PPC as advertising channel. More and more merchants engaged in PPC advertising, either directly or via a search marketing agency and realized that this space was already well occupied by their affiliates. Although this fact alone did create channel conflicts and hot debate between advertisers and affiliates, was the biggest issue the bidding on advertisers names, brands and trademarks by some affiliates. A larger number of advertisers started to adjust their affiliate program terms to prohibit their affiliates from bidding on those type of keywords. Some advertisers however did and still do embrace this behavior of their affiliates and allow them, even encourage them, to bid an any term they like, including the advertisers trademarks.
Lag of Self Regulation
Affiliate Marketing is driving by entrepreneurs who are working at the forefront of internet marketing. Affiliates are the first to take advantage of new emerging trends and technologies where established advertisers do not dare to be active. Affiliates take risks and "trial and error" is probably the best way to describe how affiliate marketers are operating. This is also the reason why most affiliates fail and give up before they "make it" and become "super affiliates" who generate $10,000 and more in commission (not sales) per month. This "frontier" life and the attitude that can be found in such type of communities is probably the main reason, why the affiliate marketing industry is not able to this day to self-regulate itself beyond individual contracts between advertiser and affiliate. The 10+ years history since the beginning of affiliate marketing is full of failed attempts[8] to create an industry organization or association of some kind that could be the initiator of regulations, standards and guidelines for the industry. Some of the failed examples are the Affiliate Union, iAfma, USAMC, Affiliate Marketing Advertising Board and Affiliate Marketing Trade Association.
CPA Networks "Threat"
Affiliate marketer usually avoid this topic as much as possible, but when it is being discussed, then are the debates explosive and heated to say the least. The discussion is about CPA Networks and their impact on "classic" Affiliate Marketing. Traditional Affiliate Marketing is resources intensive and requires a lot of maintenance. Most of this includes the management, monitoring and support of affiliates. Affiliate Marketing is supposed to be about long-term and mutual benefitial partnerships between advertisers and affiliates. CPA Networks on the other hand eliminate the need for the advertiser to build and maintain relationships to affiliates, because that task is performed by the CPA Network for the advertiser. The Advertiser simply puts an offer out, which is in almost every case a CPA based offer, and the CPA Networks take care of the rest by mobilizing their affiliates to promote that offer. CPS or revenue share offers are rarely be found at CPA Networks, which is the main compensation model of classic Affiliate Marketing.
The Name Affiliate Marketing
Voices in the industry are getting louder that recommend a renaming of Affiliate Marketing. The problem with the word affiliate marketing is that it is often confused with network-marketing or multi-level marketing what it is absolutely not. "Performance Marketing" is one of the alternative names that is used the most, but other recommendations were made as well, but who is to decide about the change of a name of a whole industry. Something like that was attempted years ago for the Search Engine Optimization Industry, an attempt that obviously failed since it is still called SEO today.
Important Abbreviations AD - Advertisement, text, banner, flash, video etc. CPA - Cost per action CPC - Cost per click CPL - Cost per lead CPM - Cost per mil (mil/mille/M = latin/Roman numeral for thousand) CPS - Cost per sale CR - Conversion rate CTR - Click through rate DRM - Dynamic rich media (type of Ad, technology). It has nothing to do with DRM as in digital rights management EPC - Earnings per click / earnings per 100 clicks OPM - (or APM) - outsourced (affiliate) program management PFI - Pay for inclusion PFP - Pay For performance PPC - Pay per click PPCSE - Pay per click search engine PPI - Pay per impression PPL - Pay per lead PPS - Pay per sale ROI - Return on investment SE - Search engines SEM - Search engine marketing SEO - Search engine optimization SERP - Search engine result page SID - URL parameter the affiliate can pass to get tracked with sales and leads
Related Topics: Affiliate, Internet marketing or online marketing / online advertising Web advertising: web banner, Ad filtering, ad serving,central ad server, pay per click, pop-up ad, click fraud, contextual advertising E-Mail advertising: e-mail spam, opt-in e-mail advertising, spamming Guerilla marketing, marketing strategy and guerrilla marketing warfare strategies Search engines: Search engine marketing (SEM), Search engine optimization (SEO) Evangelism marketing or Word of mouth marketing Industry calculations: Click through rate (CTR), cost per action (CPA), Effective Cost per action|effective cost per action (eCPA), cost per click (CPC), cost per impression (CPI), cost per mil (CPM), effective cost per mil (eCPM)
End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing
Content derived from Wikipedia article on Pay Per Click
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Pay per ranking. (Discuss) Editing of this article by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled. Please discuss changes, request unprotection, or create an account.
Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines.
Advertisers bid on "keywords" that they believe their target market (people they think would be interested in their offer) would type in the search bar when they are looking for their type of product or service. For example, if an advertiser sells red widgets, he/she would bid on the keyword "red widgets", hoping a user would type those words in the search bar, see their ad, click on it and buy. These ads are called "sponsored links" or "sponsored ads" and appear next to and sometimes above the natural or organic results on the page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad.
While many companies exist in this space, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing, which was formerly Overture, are the largest network operators as of 2006. MSN has started beta testing with their own PPC services MSN adCenter. Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0.01 (up to US$0.50). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Abuse of the pay per click model can result in click fraud.
Categories
PPC engines can be categorized in "Keyword", "Product", "Service" engines. However, a number of companies may fall in two or more categories. More models are continually being developed. Currently, pay per click programs do not generate any revenue from site traffic to sites using these programs. Only when visitors click on banner advertisements or pop-ups is revenue generated.
Keyword PPCs
Advertisers using these bid on "keywords", which can be words or phrases, and can include product model numbers. When a user searches for a particular word or phrase, the list of advertiser links appears in order of bidding. Keywords, also referred to as search terms, are the very heart of Pay per Click advertising. The terms are guarded as highly valuable trade secrets by the advertisers, and many firms offer software or services to help advertisers develop these invaluable words...
As of 2005, notable PPC Keyword search engines include: Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), Microsoft adCenter, LookSmart, Miva (formerly FindWhat), Ask Jeeves, 7Search, Kanoodle, and Baidu.
Product PPCs
"Product" engines let advertisers provide "feeds" of their product databases and when users search for a product, the links to the different advertisers for that particular product appear, giving more prominence to advertisers who pay more, but letting the user sort by price to see the lowest priced product and then click on it to buy. These engines are also called Product comparison engines or Price comparison engines.
Noteworthy PPC Product search engines are: BizRate.com, Shopzilla.com, NexTag, PriceGrabber.com, and Shopping.com.
Service PPCs
"Service" engines let advertisers provide feeds of their service databases and when users search for a service offering links to advertisers for that particular service appear, giving prominence to advertisers who pay more, but letting users sort their results by price or other methods. Some Product PPCs have expanded into the service space while other service engines operate in specific verticals.
Noteworthy PPC services include NexTag, SideStep, and TripAdvisor.
Pay per call
Similar to pay per click, pay per call is a business model for ad listings in search engines and directories that allows publishers to charge local advertisers on a per-call basis for each lead (call) they generate. The term "pay per call" is sometimes confused with "click to call". Click-to-call, along with call tracking, is a technology that enables the “pay-per-call” business model.
Pay-per-call is not just restricted to local advertisers. Many of the pay-per-call search engines allows advertisers with a national presence to create ads with local telephone numbers.
According to the Kelsey Group, the pay-per-phone-call market is expected to reach US$3.7 billion by 2010.
Related Topics Ad serving Click-through rate Keyword bucketing Search engine marketing Search engine optimization
External links Adwords Blog Yahoo Blog Adcenter Blog
End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_per_click
Content derived from Wikipedia article on Web Banner
A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking them to the web site of the advertiser. The advertisement is constructed from an image (GIF, JPEG, PNG), JavaScript program or multimedia object employing technologies such as Java, Shockwave or Flash, often employing animation or sound to maximize presence. Images are usually in a high-aspect ratio shape. That is to say, either wide and short, or tall and narrow, hence the reference to banners. These images are usually placed on web pages that have interesting content, such as a newspaper article or an opinion piece.
Typical web banner, sized 468x60 pixels.The web banner is displayed when a web page that references the banner is loaded into a web browser. This event is known as an "impression". When the viewer clicks on the banner, the viewer is directed to the website advertised in the banner. This event is known as a "click through". In many cases, banners are delivered by a central ad server.
Many banner ads work on a click-through payback system. When the advertiser scans their logfiles and detects that a web user has visited the advertiser's site from the content site by clicking on the banner ad, the advertiser sends the content provider some small amount of money (usually around five to ten US cents). This payback system is often how the content provider is able to pay for the Internet access to supply the content in the first place.
Web banners function the same way as traditional advertisements are intended to function: notifying consumers of the product or service and presenting reasons why the consumer should choose the product in question, although web banners differ in that the results for advertisement campaigns may be monitored real-time and may be targeted to the viewer's interests.
Many web surfers regard these advertisements as highly annoying because they distract from a web page's actual content or waste bandwidth. (Of course, the purpose of the banner ad is to attract attention. Without attracting attention, which makes it annoying, it would provide no revenue for the advertiser or for the content provider.) Newer web browsers often include options to disable pop-ups or block images from selected websites. Another way of avoiding banners is to use a proxy server that blocks them, such as Privoxy.
Web banner adverts are restricted by high cost and limited physical banner area.
History
The first clickable web ad (First Internet Ad) (which later came to be known by the term "banner ad") was sold by Global Net Navigator (GNN) in 1993 to Heller, Ehrman, White and McAuliffe.
Founded by O'Reilly and Associates, Global Network Navigator (GNN) was the first commercially supported web publication and one of the very first web sites ever. Dale Dougherty was GNN's developer and publisher. O'Reilly and Associates sold GNN to AOL in 1995 and the site was discontinued a few years later.
The first web banner sold by HotWired, an important early pioneer in commercial web publishing started by Wired Magazine, was paid for by AT&T, and was put online on October 25, 1994 [1].
HotWired was the first web site to sell banner ads in large quantities to a wide range of major corporate advertisers. Andrew Anker was HotWired's first CEO. Rick Boyce, a former media buyer with San Francisco advertising agency Hal Riney & Parnters, spearheaded the sales effort for the company. When HotWired was sold to Lycos, Boyce became its Vice President of Sales.
HotWired coined the term "banner ad" and was the first company to provide click through rate reports to its customers.
In May of 1994, Internet commercialization pioneer Ken McCarthy, who mentored Boyce in his transition from traditional to online advertising, first introduced the concept of a clickable/trackable ad at a conference held at 3220 Sacramento Street (the former home of Apple Computers Multimedia Lab). At the time, he stated that he believed that only a direct response model - in which the return on investment of individual ads was measured - would prove sustainable over the long run for online advertising.
In spite of this prediction, banner ads were valued and sold based on the number of impressions they generated. This approach to banner ad sales proved successful and provided the economic foundation for the web industry from the period of 1994 to 2000 until the market for banner ads "crashed" and there was a radical revaluation of their value.
The new online advertising model that emerged in the early years of the 21st century, introduced by GotTo (later Overture, then Yahoo and perfected by Google's AdWords program), closely resembled McCarthy's 1994 projection.
Types of web banners
Message Plus Unit (MPU) - A Message Plus Unit takes the form of a square advert that usually occurs in the middle of ordinary page content.
Related Topics: Online advertising Marketing Advertising Central ad server E-marketing Popup ad Hover ad
End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_banner
Content derived from Wikipedia article on Opt-in Mail Advertising
Opt-in e-mail advertising or permission marketing is a method of advertising by electronic mail wherein the recipient of the advertisement has consented to receive it. It is one of several ways developed by marketers to eliminate the disadvantages of e-mail marketing.
E-mail has become a very popular mode of communication across the world. It has also become extremely popular to advertise through . Some of the many advantages of advertising through e-mail are the direct contact with the consumer and is “inexpensive, flexible, and simple to implement” (Fairhead, 2003). There are also disadvantages attached to e-mail advertising such as, alienating the consumer because of overload to messages or the advertisement getting deleted without getting read.
Permission e-mail marketing may evolve into a technology that uses a handshake protocol between sender and receiver (Fairhaed, 2003). This system is intended to eventually result in a high degree of satisfaction between consumers and marketers. If opt-in e-mail advertising is used, the material that is emailed to consumers will be “anticipated.” It is assumed that the consumer wants to receive it, which makes it unlike unsolicited advertisements sent to the consumer (often referred to as spam). Ideally, opt-in e-mail advertisements will be more personal and relevant to the consumer than untargetted advertisements.
A common example of permission marketing is a newsletter sent to a firm’s customers. Newsletters like this are a way to let customers know about upcoming events or promotions, or new products. In this type of advertising, a company that wants to send a newsletter to their customers may ask them at the point of purchase if they would like to receive this newsletter.
With a foundation of opted-in contact information stored in a database, marketers can automatically send out promotional materials. The marketers can also segment their promotions to specific market segments.
Email Marketing Services and CAN-SPAM Compliance
Because the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 authorizes an USD 11,000 penalty per violation for spamming each individual recipient, many commercial e-mail marketers within the United States utilize a service or special software that helps ensure compliance with the Act. A variety of older systems exist which do not ensure compliance with the Act. To comply with the Act's regulation of commercial e-mail, services typically: require users to authenticate their return address and include a valid physical address, provide a one-click unsubscribe feature, and prohibit importing lists of purchased addresses which may not have given valid permission.
In addition to satisfying legal requirements, services such as ConstantContact and PoliteMail help customers to set up and manage their own e-mail marketing campaigns. The services provide e-mail templates, automatically handle subscriptions and removals, and generate statistics on how many messages were received and openned, and whether the recipients clicked on any links within the messages.
End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opt-in_e-mail_advertising
Content derived from Wikipedia article on Search Engine Marketing
In Internet marketing, search engine marketing, or SEM, is a set of marketing methods to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs). The three main methods of SEM are:
Search engine optimization attempts to improve rankings for relevant keywords in search results by improving a web site's structure and content
Pay per click advertising uses sponsored search engine listings to drive traffic to a web site. The advertiser bids for search terms, and the search engine ranks ads based on a competitive auction as well as other factors. Paid inclusion can provide a guarantee that the website is included in the search engine's natural listings. However, as of 2006 the leading search engine, Google, does not offer this service.
Methods
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization or SEO aims to index and improve rankings for the webpages which are most relevant to the keywords searched for according to the algorithm of each search engine (an algorithm is basically a mathematical formula used by the search engines to determine which results to show and which order to show them in). The relevant pages are returned in search engine results pages (SERPS). It is important to remember that genuine search engine optimizers are basically marketers who keep their target market in mind as much as the search engine algorithms (a lot of which is known purely empirically). Therefore, while we call this process search engine optimization, good marketers will note that their focus is to optimize their web page for the search engine user, who is their target audience. For instance, at one time it was believed that keyword density was an important ranking factor, but today that view is not generally held among SEO professionals. Today, many SEOs recommend writing copy for visitors first, because the web site cannot achieve its marketing objectives with "unnatural" sounding text, laden with keywords.
In order to further fine tune the pages and keep them user and search engine friendly, the architecture of the website, including its internal link structure, navigation etc., are also suitably modified for human beings and search spiders to navigate through whole website pages. Search spiders then can scan all necessary data about the whole site and store it in the search engines' data base. A good navigation systems has other benefits also, such as helping to improve user experience.
Both the number of inbound links to the site as well as the 'quality' of the links heavily influence the rankings of a site in the search engine. The definition of a 'quality' link is evolving in response to people's attempt to artificially influence the search engine results by obtaining large numbers of 'irrelevant' links to their sites. Search engine algorithms are evolutionary and strive to develop every day in an attempt to provide the most relevant and useful pages to the users and strike out the websites that trick them to attain higher positions for a while.
These processes are known as Organic or Algorithmic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of websites. Search engine optimization takes considerable time and, as such, many sites make use of Pay-per-Click (PPC) to market their website without having to wait for the results of Organic SEO. However, organic search results can get viewed and clicked on frequently, so a dual strategy of SEO and PPC can provide more exposure than either strategy alone.
Pay per click (PPC) and Search engine advertising
Advertising with search engines is known by different names. It is also called sponsored search and search engine advertising. The most popular programs are offered by Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. Some offer PPC, where the advertiser is only charged when a user clicks on the ad, also known as Cost Per Click (CPC). Others use a Cost Per Impression (CPM) model where advertisers are charged for impressions. Ads can take many forms, including text, banner ads, video ads, map ads, and even audio ads.
Advertising based on a keyword search
Advertising based on a keyword search could take place through a search engine such as google.com, or a search engine partner site, such as shopping.com. For example, Google offers a service called AdWords, which allows companies, for a small fee, to have a link to their website featured when a user searches a specific keyword which the company specified. Advertising based on content context Many search engines (e.g. Google, Ask.com, Yahoo! Search) have partner websites with specific content. The websites agree to let the search engines place content-specific advertising on their website, in return for a fee. The search engine then finds companies interested in advertising on websites with their desired content. For example, an online dog food retailer might have their advertisement placed on a site about dogs. Both of these advertising formats allow advertisers to target specific users with certain interests. Generally these advertisements are paid for based on either a pay per click campaign or an impression based campaign.
Paid inclusion
Search engines use computer programs called spiders or web crawlers to automatically discover websites and catalog their content. As this process can take some time and requires a website to be linked to from another website (to allow the crawler to find it), most search engines except for Google provide another channel to be included in search rankings via paying. This is different from pay per click advertising because the inclusion is guaranteed but not placement.
Search Engine Marketing Organizations
The duties of non-profit search engine marketing organizations are to educate members and non-members, support and promote the industry, engage in research and studies, raise awareness of issues and to play an active role in the self regulation of the search marketing industry.
List of the foremost globally active search engine marketing organizations:
SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, is a non-profit professional association for search engine marketers. SMA-NA.org – SMA-NA, the Search Marketing Association of North America. SMA-UK.org – SMA-UK, the Search Marketing Association of the United Kingdom. SMA-EU.org – SMA-EU, the Search Marketing Association of the European Union. SEOPros.org – SEO Pros, Search Engine Optimization Professionals, is a not for profit organization of search engine optimization consultants and internet marketers
End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_Engine_Marketing
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