Google Inc. introduced a self-service advertising system in 2000 called Adwords. The system allows you to advertise in two main areas:
– Advertisers can run paid ads alongside Google search results. These are called search ads.
– Advertisers may advertise on the websites of Google’s display partners. These are called Display Ads.
Google Adwords Search Ads
Search ads appear not only on Google but also on the search results listings of Google’s search partners (e.g. AOL). The great advantage of search ads is that we can target ads to those who search for our service. In practice, when someone searches on a word, Google also shows relevant ads related to the search term next to / above / below the search results list. The keyword’s Quality Score is a measure of relevance in the AdWords system. The higher a keyword’s Quality Score associated with an ad, the cheaper it can appear for that word. This ensures that the user experience is not compromised by irrelevant ads.
Google Display Ads
Display ads are now available on hundreds of thousands of Google partner sites, making it the largest advertising system in the world.
The Google Adwords Display System allows you to display text ads, image banners, and video ads.
You can choose which Google partner sites you want to advertise on, but you can also enter keywords, in which case your ad will appear on webpages that contain that keyword. With the help of the AdWords system, your ad can appear at affordable prices on the highest quality websites and online media.
Google Adwords Pricing
On the search network, you can choose CPC (cost-per-click). The great benefit of this is that we only pay for impressions when a user clicks on our ad. So we only pay for potential buyers.
For Display ads, you can choose to pay for your ad on a CPC or CPM basis.
Cost-per-click is determined by a combination of two main parameters: advertiser competition and the keyword’s Quality Score. Quality Score is used to evaluate the relevance of your ad to a particular keyword. Quality Score primarily considers ad text, landing page quality, CTR (keyword clickthrough rate), and other relevancy factors. The higher a Quality Score from 1 to 10, the less a advertiser will receive per click.
If you’re interested in the number of searches on Google each month for the keywords that characterize our business, the Google Keyword Tool can help.