What are Pay Per Click Campaigns?


Defined Tag: Pay Per Click Campaigns.

Pay per click campaigns can be a very effective way of providing quick, targeted traffic to a site, and can be a cost effective method of advertising since you only pay as much as you want, when you want to.

Pay per click campaigns can be quickly and easily set up and your ad can be viewed the same day. Google Adwords and Overture are the most popular pay per click ad campaigns and MSN are about to launch their own with MSN adCenter.

Before setting up the campaign, you will need to have a set of keywords, since these are what drives pay per click campaigns. Think about what words potential visitors will use to find your site. Use keyword finding tools such as Word Tracker if it will help you.

Within your advertising account, each keyword will be individually listed and a cost per click, or bid, is placed on each one. The more common the keyword, the higher the bid will need to be, and may stretch as far as a few dollars. The lowest bid may only be a cent or two if it is an uncommon word. You can set a budget for your advertising, which may be particularly useful if you need high bids on some of your keywords, to prevent the cost spiraling.

When someone types your keywords into a search engine, your ad could be shown in the results which stand out from the ordinary listings. It might also be shown on affiliate sites of the program. Whichever end of the scale it is, the higher you go above the minimum bid required, the higher your ad should appear.

As the name suggests, pay per click campaigns only require you to pay for successful advertising – if someone clicks on your ad after finding it through one of your keywords being entered into a search, then you pay for that click, according to what your bid was on that keyword at the time.

Pay per click campaigns should not be static. Bid requirements change daily as advertisers budgets expire or campaigns are changed. You will need to keep up with this within your own campaign, since if a keyword becomes popular, you may find the bid you had on it is no longer high enough to keep it appearing in searches. Using pay per click campaigns will keep you on your toes, but are a useful and easy method of advertising.