With over 5 billion internet users, PPC advertising provides users with a unique and modern way of reaching their target audience. While Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords, is the most popular PPC advertising platform, there are other options that can provide brands with great results. This article will provide an overview of PPC advertising and explore the top platforms you can consider for your brand.
What is PPC Advertising?
PPC stands for pay-per-click. As the term denotes, an advertiser pays an advertising fee when a page user clicks on an ad. Essentially, you pay for targeted ads when a user visits your site. A well-optimized Google Ads campaign can be cost-effective while bringing great results. For instance, if you invest $5 in a PPC campaign and make $200, you will have made a handsome profit.
How PPC Advertising Works
How a PPC advertising campaign works depends on the platform. However, most platforms have an almost similar process, which consists of the following steps:
- Depending on your objectives, choose a campaign type.
- Set your campaign depending on audience, schedule, device location, etc.
- Create a budget and bidding strategy.
- Create an Ad
After your ad is live, the cost will depend on different factors, such as your budget, bid, campaign setting, relevance, and ad quality. Creating a more relevant and trustworthy PPC campaign can reward you with a higher PPC position and a lower cost. Therefore, if you need to be rewarded with your PPC campaign, you should learn how to do it.
What is a PPC platform?
A pay-per-click advertising platform is a tool used to create, measure, and manage PPC advertising campaigns. With these kinds of campaigns, you can target audiences with ads tailored to meet their needs. The PPC advertising platforms provide some great tools for keyword research, creation of ads, budget management and optimization, campaign analytics, and reporting.
Benefits of Using PPC Advertising Platforms
Is PPC advertising worth the money? Here are a few benefits of running PPC campaigns.
- Ability to set campaigns according to your budget
- Payment is only made when a user clicks on an ad
- Can easily test between different kinds of ads
- Offers a lot of brand recognition
- Enable brands to reach their ideal customers.
Different Types Of PPC Advertising Platforms
PPC advertising platforms can be categorized into different categories, such as:
Display
These platforms show ads on different websites, including the network’s platform. The ads are a great choice for increasing brand awareness and engagement. This is because they target customers interested in your products or services.
A good example of display ads is the Google Display Network, which shows ads to customers who previously visited your site. The ad can be shown to people fitting a particular interest group or demographic.
Search
There is a chance that when you visit the Google search engine, you encounter sponsored pages appearing before the organic results. That’s how the search PPC platform works.
They create campaigns that target customers searching for keywords on the search engine. It is the most popular type of PPC advertising platform. When using these platforms, you begin by identifying the relevant keywords for your niche. You then bid on them while tracking the results of your campaigns.
Social Media platforms
Social media networks, such as Facebook and Instagram, allow advertisers to place ads and pay for a certain number of impressions or clicks. These types of ads can be a great choice for achieving different things, such as:
- Building an audience
- Increasing brand awareness
- Engaging with your potential customers.
For instance, you can use Facebook to create highly targeted campaigns depending on age, location, interest, and gender. The platform also has some valuable tools to gain insights into your campaign.
Top 5 Best PPC Advertising Platforms
Here are the top 5 PPC advertising platforms you should consider:
Google Ads
With a market share of 28%, Google Ads is the most popular PPC advertising platform for small businesses. With a great search network and a large display network, it is easy for advertisers to find audiences and target them well.
The ads on Google are mostly shown on searches. They target a particular search query on Google in the Google Ad network, YouTube, and other search partners. Google prices their ad placement depending on different factors such as:
- Average CPC for the ad
- Type of ad you are running
- Your industry
However, the average cost of Google ads is $2 to $4.
Microsoft Ads
Bing, owned by Microsoft, is the second most popular search engine after Google. It therefore goes without saying that they rank second to Google. Microsoft Ads are usually shown on platforms like Bing, Yahoo, and their search partner networks.
Microsoft ads enable users to choose from different kinds of ads, such as:
- Dynamic search words
- App ads
- Video and image ads
No matter your industry, Bing ad CPC $1.54.
Facebook Ads
Facebook advertising allows placing ads in the Facebook news feed, Facebook groups, and messenger inbox. Advertisers can place different ads, such as carousels, images, videos, instant experience, and lead ads. On average, Facebook changes a cost per click of $0.94 per ad.
YouTube Ads
With its massive audience, YouTube is another great PPC advertising platform. YouTube allows advertisers to create different kinds of ads such as skippable and nonskippable YouTube ads, bumper, instream, out-stream, and more. The YouTube advertising cost ranges from $0.01 to $0.03 per click. To reach around 100k views, you can expect to pay around $2,000.
Amazon Ads
If your goal is to reach e-commerce shoppers, there is no better PPC advertising platform to enable you to do that better than Amazon. The platform allows advertisers to place ads in different places, such as the home page, product detail page, Twitch, and partner ad networks. The platform charges an average CPC of $0.89. Advertisers can place different types of ad formats, such as:
- Display ads
- Video ads
- Sponsored product pages.
Final Thoughts
PPC advertising platforms offer a great opportunity to reach your target audience. By understanding the top PPC platforms to use and optimizing your campaign for the same, you can take your brand to the next level.
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