Chris
05-23-2003, 07:16 AM
Google's Adwords program is what generates those little boxes you see to the right of Google's search results. Currently Adwords are shown on AOL, EarthLink, AskJeeves, and of course Google.
Adwords work the same was as Overture in that you must bid for placement, however there is less competition so your overall bid does not need to be as high, and there is no minimum bid with Google. Additionally Google will spread your impressions out to fulfill whatever monthly budget you have over the course of the whole month. What this means is that even if there is someone who has bid higher than you they likely will not have their ad shown on every page view. In fact in my test campaign there were 5 competing listings and at least 90% of the time only 2 were shown, and sometimes mine was the only one. What this means is that you can bid low and still be listed highly occasionally.
Additionally, due to their placement, I feel that being listed below other paid listings isn't as bad as it is on Overture. If you're fourth on Overture you might end up at the bottom of the page or not on the page at all. If you're fourth on Google you'll still be there, on the side, and probably not the fourth ad to boot.
Unlike Overture, Google does charge a nominal $5 setup fee. Also unlike Overture your Adwords listings can be live the night you sign up. All in all Google runs a good all around PPC program.
It isn't perfect though. One issue is that you're drastically limited by the size of the back and must often be creative when trying to figure out how to write your ad copy with only a handful of characters of text at your disposal. Another issue is that they monitor performance and if your ads do not perform well they disable them - this can become annoying after awhile and expensive as well. Eventually they'll charge you $5 every time you enable a deactivated ad. One final problem is that Google will not allow you to advertise a site that has popups. On the surface this sounds fine but they don't care what the popup is. For instance I run a popup that is cookie controlled so that each user only sees it once, ever, and it advertises my newsletter. My Adwords listing was eventually disabled when a Google editor noticed this.
Original Source: http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/3-ppc-programs/2
Adwords work the same was as Overture in that you must bid for placement, however there is less competition so your overall bid does not need to be as high, and there is no minimum bid with Google. Additionally Google will spread your impressions out to fulfill whatever monthly budget you have over the course of the whole month. What this means is that even if there is someone who has bid higher than you they likely will not have their ad shown on every page view. In fact in my test campaign there were 5 competing listings and at least 90% of the time only 2 were shown, and sometimes mine was the only one. What this means is that you can bid low and still be listed highly occasionally.
Additionally, due to their placement, I feel that being listed below other paid listings isn't as bad as it is on Overture. If you're fourth on Overture you might end up at the bottom of the page or not on the page at all. If you're fourth on Google you'll still be there, on the side, and probably not the fourth ad to boot.
Unlike Overture, Google does charge a nominal $5 setup fee. Also unlike Overture your Adwords listings can be live the night you sign up. All in all Google runs a good all around PPC program.
It isn't perfect though. One issue is that you're drastically limited by the size of the back and must often be creative when trying to figure out how to write your ad copy with only a handful of characters of text at your disposal. Another issue is that they monitor performance and if your ads do not perform well they disable them - this can become annoying after awhile and expensive as well. Eventually they'll charge you $5 every time you enable a deactivated ad. One final problem is that Google will not allow you to advertise a site that has popups. On the surface this sounds fine but they don't care what the popup is. For instance I run a popup that is cookie controlled so that each user only sees it once, ever, and it advertises my newsletter. My Adwords listing was eventually disabled when a Google editor noticed this.
Original Source: http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/3-ppc-programs/2