There are two types of results when you are looking for something on the search engines. The first type of results are the organic results which are displayed in accordance with your Search Engine Optimization. We already studied the mechanism of Search Engine Optimization in previous articles.
The second type of results are advertisement-based. Indeed, it is possible to pay a search engine to be displayed in certain search results. This method is called Search Engine Advertising (SEA). SEA are advertisements shown on the search engine results pages, on websites, and on social media.
Google is the most profitable online advertising company in the world thanks to its own advertising program: Google AdWords. Google AdWords is divided into two main networks: on one hand, there is the search network and on the other hand, there is the display network.
The search network refers to text ads that are displayed on the search engine results pages for certain keywords. These ads are displayed at the top, and at the bottom of the Google pages. Previously, Google displayed ads on the right side of the results pages as well but has recently removed this option. This caused the number of ads per page to go from 12 to 7 ads since February.
The search network is composed of Google’s search engine and others websites owned by Google where users can search on such as Google Play, Google Shopping, and Google Maps and on partner websites such as Ask.com for example.
The display network refers to image ads that will be displayed on Google sites such as YouTube, Blogger, and Gmail and thousands of other websites from the Google Network like Newspapers websites for example.
The rank of your ad is based on two criteria: your bid, which is the amount of money you are willing to pay to show your ads, and your quality score. The quality score is composed of the expected click-through rate, the ad relevance, and the landing page experience. The quality score is reported on a 1-10 scale.
Social Media can be a very good channel to display ads thanks to the traffic they gather and the possibility to reach a very precise target. Indeed, Facebook has 1.65 billion monthly active users which are huge, and moreover, the social network has very precise data about its users: their gender, age, location, hobbies, studies, job… All these elements can be essential for the success of an advertising campaign.
Another big advantage of online advertising is the possibility to get clear feedback, results, and statistics about the impact of your campaign. This data is even more trackable if you own an online shop because you can know if a sale has been done directly from an advertising lead.
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