Pay per click advertising, what's it all about?

I've been asked for a bit of advise on pay per click advertising.  I'm no expert in this field, but I know a little more than my friend does.   They've been offered pay per click advertising in a mobile phone app.  I need to ensure my friend understands what pay per click advertising is.

So, we're going to forget the smartphone argument for now.   Let's concentrate on online advertising and pay per click.

I'm an enthusiastic angler.  I love all types of fishing. I'll happily sit at the side of a pond, waiting for a carp to take my bait.  I'll stand in rivers trying for wild brown trout and grayling.  I'll go to a local trout lake and cast fly after fly, wandering around it, hoping for a bite.  I'm not very good at it, but I enjoy it, its a good break from the office and the pressure that comes with it.




So, back to pay per click...for the search term..

fishing county durham

...my friends site is currently 2nd in the list...

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=fishing+county+durham&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

But for the term...

fishing tackle county durham

...they're still on the first page, but bottom of the list.   When at the bottom of the page, there's a a massive risk that you'll slip to the 2nd page.  How many people look at the 2nd page?   Or even for the phrase...

fly fishing north east

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=fly+fishing+north+east&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

I can't find their site on the first few pages.  But, all the local anglers probably know where they are.  If they're to get more anglers visiting from the region, it might be an important phrase to target...?

You can spend ages optimising your site, trying to get to the top of the search engine rankings, or you can advertise online.  Or you can do both.  As well as the search results, you can pay to appear in search results.  As well as the 10 results, you'll also notice area's on the page where other sites are shown.  Like...

So, I've searched for 'fly fishing', there are three results at the top of the page with the coloured background.  There's also the ads down the right of the page.  All these results have appeared here because of pay per click advertising.

What does it mean?
Essentially, you pay for every time someone clicks on one of the links.  You don't pay to appear in the results, you only pay if someone clicks on that advert in the search result.

To appear in the results, you must bid against your competitors for a particular phrase.  Let's say you make a bid of 5p per click, and everyone has bid 50p, then they're going to appear in the advertising slots much more than you do.  But its only when someone clicks on that advert that the 50p is paid.  At 5p per click, you might appear in the advertising slot, but it'll be much less frequently than those that have bid the higher amount.

To ensure you don't spend too much on your advertising, you can set a budget.  It's a much more targeted form of advertising than advertising in a newspaper.

But it's not just search results where your ad will appear.  Take a look at this blog page.  I've made an agreement with Google that I'll show adverts on my blog page.   I don't choose the ads, Google manages those depending on the content of what I post.  As this blog is about fishing, I'm fairly sure there will be fishing related adverts appearing.  On other blog posts, there's no mention of fishing, its all software development, or Agile, so the adverts should be more targeted to the content.

Actually, thinking about it, that may not happen.  There could be other search terms that have made a higher bid.  The ads may also be targeted to specific visitors. Google know what you've searched for, they know the sites you visit.  They know a lot about you.  You can see what they think of you by visiting a page on their site.

Why would I want adverts appearing in my blog?

Every time someone clicks on a link, I take a cut of that pay per click.  It works for me, and it works for the people paying the pay per click.  They get their ads appearing in search results and also thousands of websites that have enabled Google AdSense.

So, for me allowing ads in my blog, I use Google AdSense, those wanting to advertise would use Google AdWords.

For iPhone smartphone users, Apple has come up with something similar, it's called iAd.  It allows people to place adverts within their smartphone applications. Moire details on the Apple website.

I don't know about Android, but as its from Google, maybe it uses AdSense.  I don't know, maybe someone can reply to this post...?

So, pay per click makes sense.  You get your website advertised all over the place, and you set your own budget.  If you're not getting the results, you can increase the click price.  You might be overwhelmed, so you might want to reduce it. But it's all manageable online.