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Trends in Online
Advertising
PPC Search Engines Creatively Promote Your
Site
Fancy, flashy
advertising is just not cutting it anymore. The once novel rich media
format has become commonplace throughout the web, and curious surfers
are no longer as easily tempted to click on ads. The decline in
click-through ratios coupled with the recent nose dive of the dot-com
industry have caused already skeptical businesses to hold back on online
advertising spending. Could these observations be taken as an indicator
of the demise of online advertising? Is there a viable alternative?
While the use of rich media formats has lost much of its novelty and
appeal, considering all online advertising efforts as ineffective would
be a bit of a stretch. The click-throughs of more popular methods of
advertising (such as pop-ups, banners, etc.) have been decreasing.
However, the use of these ratios as the most viable means of measuring
online advertising efforts has recently come into question.
Click-through ratios may provide telling statistics such as visit to
purchase conversions. However, they do not take into consideration the
power of an impression, by which the success of the more traditional
means of mass media advertising—billboards, television, radio, etc.—are
measured. Since the more traditional advertising media do not have the
burden of “proof” for their effectiveness, online advertising should
likewise be measured—by exposure. Jupiter Media Metrix reports that in
the US alone, internet users grew from 37 million in 1996 to over 122
million in 2001 and is expected to surpass 200 million by 2005. With
such a significant online population, the impressions that various forms
of online advertising can make on the users cannot be easily dismissed.
This is where a less known form of advertising—pay per click search
engines—enters the scene as fertile grounds for advertisers' messages.
The web, once inundated with curious surfers who aimlessly wandered and
clicked merely out of curiosity, is more and more consisting of
searchers with highly targeted objectives for being online. Search
engines have thus become the preferred means of locating sites,
providing the “highly focused” searcher with a return list of what they
are looking for. These searchers are thus looking to “click-through” in
order to locate information, eliminating the need for newer and fancier
advertising media to entice their click. In addition, as they read the
return list to find what they are looking for, a well-written and
creatively branded listing that they pass up will inevitably still make
an “impression” on the surfer. Pete Prestipino, Internet Marketing
Consultant, states that search engines are indeed unique to the world of
advertising. “Because consumers are actually looking for what you are
selling, it becomes very easy to zero in on the market.”
With the PPC search engine model, your site is charged per click and you
have the ability to control your sites’ ranking. You can be listed in
the 7Search.com search return list for little as $25—best of all, you
have the power to control your ranking on the search return list and
monitor your spendings. Not only does 7Search.com enable you to generate
targeted traffic, but it is always taking concerted efforts to market
your site.
With their new, patent-pending Predictive Search Technology, your site
automatically appears on the right hand side of the search return list
under terms of related categories. For example, if you own a site that
sells baby strollers, your site can appear in the predictive column of
7Search.com when a surfer is looking for pregnancy books. The
“highly-focused” searcher will more likely read through a search return
list than click on a banner ad, especially if the listing is already
related to their search needs. Even if the searcher does not click
through to your site from the right hand column, the mere exposure of
your site has already made an invaluable, related impression so that
when the searcher is actually ready to purchase a stroller, your site
would be branded into their memory and it will appear in their mind’s
eye.
Although no one can really measure the impact of an impression, from our
understanding of more conventional advertising media, we can be certain
that impressions are worth the investment. So, before a business
considers cutting online advertising dollars, perhaps they ought to take
advantage of alternative methods.
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