The Pay Per Click (PPC marleting strategy) is a popular Internet marketing plan based on the visitors of search engines, content sites (blogs) and advertising networks; pay per click marketing strategy benefits from internet users, looking and searching for various topics by using common words, so called marketing Keywords.
Marketing advertisers are charged when an online user clicks upon the posted ad; an advertisement is often placed within search engines and advertisers are urged to bid on specific keywords or phrases that are related to their business and their target market (marketing target and target segmentation). By reference to content sites such as blogs, a regularly charge is fixed for every click (pay per click) istead of the bidding system upon keywords for an online marketing strategy.
How does Pay Per Click function?
The marketing campaign or advertising panel under the PPC marketing strategy (pay per click) will and appear on a user’s screen when his or her searched word (usually a keyword) matches the keyword list of the advertiser or when a similar content is related to the search. These types of marketing plans and advertisements are known by sponsored ads and/or sponsored links for they are displayed next to, or over the results of the search engine.
In terms of growth and expansion, Google AdWords, Microsoft adcenter and Yahoo Search Marketing are the leading 3 marketing networks in the world; note that all 3 of them operate their marketing campaign posts using the highest bid strategy, where the highest bidder among advertisers will have the advantage of featuring first n the list of results within the search engine.
A Cost per click marketing plan (CPC) is different in terms of results depending on the search engine and most of all, depending on the intensity of competition upon relevant words and specific keywords.
Despite the integration of anti-fraud and counter abuse clicks, the pay per click online advertisement is still vulnerable in face of abuses despite all preventive measures taken and applied by major search engines (google, yahoo and others). The source of abuse is mainly from competitors or crooked web developers aiming to overcome the automated service of security.
How is pay per click charged?
2 primary payment methods are applied: flat rate PPC and bid based PPC.
However, the 2 marketing strategy theories share 1 thing in common and that is the obligation to consider the potential cost of every click impending from any given source. This is where marketing segmentation plays its role for limiting the value of the cost imposed by Pay Per Click; advertisers should target individuals of a specific market segment in order to receive and maximize the desired results of the conducted marketing campaign.
Difference between flat rate and Bid based in Pay Per Click:
Flat Rate PPC:
In the Pay Per Click under a flat rate charging system, advertisers or publishers acknowledge and agree on a specific sum in return for every click upon their link. In most of the times, the publisher of a marketing plan or marketing campaign uses the rate card which responsibility is to provide a detailed listing of the Cost per Click (CPC) inside all the areas of the search engine where the ad is posted or in the various spaces of a network or website.
These amounts of money are always connected to the content within a website’s page but values depend on the popularity and attraction’ potential of specific pages or areas of a website where the majority of internet users are directed or logged in. Pages with high traffic are more valuable for advertisers and marketing campaigns, which means that the CPC, cost per click, will be higher and more expensive. Bargains conducted by advertisers are negotiated for lowering PPC rates knowing that their online marketing campaign is a long term issue of website marketing plan.
Bid Based PPC:
A bid-based marketing model starts with the advertisers’ signature of a contractual agreement allowing them to get into competition with other promoters in an online marketing campaign battle where each party places a private bid upon specific keywords that are hosted by a search engine, publisher or by an advertising network. Each online marketing manager or advocate notifies the hosting site of the cost ceiling for a specific advertising spot or keyword; this is where the auction (bidding based system) gets involved to determine the listing order of results that an internet user will see on the screen.
As soon as the advertising spot is part of a given search engine results page (SERP), an automatic auction is launched when the search for a keyword occurs, knowing that this keyword is being bid upon. The bids on the keyword, which purpose is to target the internet search user’s geography, time and date of the search, demography etc. are afterwards compared in order to determine the winner.
Logically speaking, the marketing advertising campaign under the pay per click search theory, will feature 1st in the list of results if it is linked to the highest placed bid; however, other factors affect the positionning of advertising banners and links such as the PPC advertising quality and the affiliate relationship with search engines or websites’ officials that would give a significant advantage in favoring your PPC internet marketing campaign.
Aside of advertising spots on the search engine results pages (SERP), foremost marketing networks tolerate the placement of contextual advertisements on partners’ sites that are also beholding an online marketing host space. Those publishers would agree to host these ads for they collect a part of the announcement’s revenue generated by the main network (usually between 50 to 80% of the marketing cost paid by advertisers).
These partnership sites are known by the name of content networks while the ads on these networks are referred at as contextual ads. The reason for such nomination is reflected by the verity that these advertising spots are connected to pre-selected keywords.
On the cost side of the observation about ppc affiliate and theories, promoters are charged for each click they obtain, by means of the genuine amount of money paid based on the sum of the bid.
Usually, the winner of bid in Pay per click marketing is charged a little more than others than the following bidders; this cost strategy aims to avoid circumstances where bidding marketers try to bend their bids by extremely undersized amounts in a trial manner to check their chances of winning the bid again by paying less per click.