AdWords is Google’s branded text-based pay-per-click (PPC) advertising service.

Google’s advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Advertisers specify the words that should trigger their ads and the maximum amount they are willing to pay per click. When a user searches Google’s search engine on www.google.com, ads for relevant words are shown as “sponsored link” on the right side of the screen, and sometimes above the main search results. The ordering of the paid listings depends on other advertisers’ bids (thus the system is classified as P4P) and the historical click-through rates of all ads shown for a given search.

All AdWords ads are eligible to be shown on www.google.com. Advertisers also have the option of enabling their ads to show on Google’s partner networks. The “search network” includes AOL search, Ask.com, and Netscape. Like www.google.com, these search engines show AdWords ads in response to user searches.

The “content network” shows AdWords ads on sites that are not search engines. Google automatically determines the subject of the pages and displays ads for which the advertiser has specified an interest in that subject. The ads show in boxes resembling banner ads, with the designation “Ads By Gooooooooooogle.” These content network sites are those that use AdSense, the other side of the Google advertising model.

AdWords is used by publishers who wish to bring traffic to their websites. The biggest competitors are Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) and MSN’s soon-to-be-launched adCenter.

Most of Google’s revenue comes from AdWords.

Legal context

The service has generated lawsuits in the area of trademark law and click fraud. [1]

Interacting with Adwords

The ads are displayed on the right hand side of the natural search results. The ads are pure text, and thus difficult to block. However, on external sites, they are hosted within an IFRAME (an HTML element), making them easy to remove with advertisement blockers.

Technology

The AdWords system was initially implemented on top of the MySQL database engine. After the system had been launched, management decided to use a commercial database (Oracle) instead. As is typical of applications simultaneously written and tuned for one database, and ported to another, the system became much slower, so eventually it was returned to MySQL ([2])

Links

• Official Website
• Program Details and FAQ
• Adwords Lawsuits
• Google AdWords API
• Google Advertising Professionals aka GAP’s
• WhoisaGAP Helps you find out who is a Google Advertising Professional

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

A central ad server is a computer server that stores advertisements and delivers them to web site visitors. These servers centrally store the ads so that advertisers and publishers can track from one source the distribution of their online advertisements, and have one location for controlling the rotation and distribution of their advertisements across the web.

The central ad server was first developed and introduced by FocaLink Media Services in 1995 for controlling online advertising or banner ads. The company was founded by Dave Zinman and Jason Strober, and based in Palo Alto, CA. In 1998, the company changed its name to AdKnowledge, and was eventually purchased by CMGI in 1999.

Ad Server Functionality

The typical common functionality of ad servers includes:

• Uploading creative, including display advertisements and rich media
• Trafficking ads according to differing business rules
• Targeting ads to different users, or content
• Optimizing creative based on results
• Reporting impressions, clicks, post-click activities, and interaction metrics

Advanced functionality may include:

• Frequency capping creative so users only see messages a limited amount of time
• Sequencing creative so users see messages in a specific order (sometimes known as surround sessions
• Excluding competitive creative so users do not see competitors’ ads directly next to one another
• Displaying creatives so an advertiser can own 100% of the inventory on a page (sometimes known as roadblocks
• Targeting creatives to users based on their previous behavior (Behavioral marketing)

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Ad serving describes the technology and service that places advertisements on web sites. Ad serving technology companies provide software to web sites and advertisers to serve ads, count them, choose the ads that will make the web site or advertiser most money, and monitor progress of different advertising campaigns.

Two types of internet companies use ad serving: web sites and advertisers. The main purpose of using an ad server is different for both of them:

For a web site, the ad server needs to look through all the ads available to serve to a user who is on a page, and choose the one that will make the web site the most money, but still conform to the rules that the advertiser and web site have agreed. For example if a web site has 10 different advertisers that have paid for a big square ad, the ad server must decide which one to serve (or display). One advertiser may have only agreed to pay for ads from 9am – 5pm. If it is after 5pm, then the Ad Server must not serve that one. Another advertiser may only have paid to show one ad to each user per day. The ad server must therefore see if a user has seen that ad before, on that day and not serve it again if the user has seen it. Another advertiser may have agreed a high price, but only if the person watching the page is in the United States. In that case, the Ad Server needs to check the IP address to determine if the user is in the US and then decide which is the highest paying ad for that user, in the US, at that time, given what that user has seen in the past.

For an advertiser the ad server needs to try to serve the ad that is most likely to result in a sale of the product advertised. For example if a user is viewing a page, the advertiser’s ad server needs to decide from previous history, what ad that user is most likely to click on and then buy the product advertised. If the user is on a technology page, then the ad server may know that on technology types of pages, the ad that works best is a blue one with mostly text and pricing and numbers, not the green ad with a picture of a model and little text. The ad server will therefore serve this ad, to try and get the highest probability of a sale from the ad.

Ad Serving is most complex when it is used by an Advertising Network. An advertising network buys ads from many web sites and therefore acts like an advertiser user of Ad Serving. When the network buys ads, it tries to place ads on sites where they work best. However an ad network then sells its aggregated ad inventory to advertisers. When doing this, it uses its Ad Serving software as a web site does. In this case it tries to make the most money by only running the ads from advertisers that pay most.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Ad filtering or ad blocking is a service which removes or alters advertising content in a webpage. This content can be represented in a variety of ways including pictures, animations, text, or pop-up windows. More advanced filters allow fine-grained control of advertisements through features like blacklists, whitelists, and regular expression filters. Certain security features also have the effect of disabling some ads.

The immediate benefits include cleaner looking webpages free from advertisements and lower resource-usage (bandwidth, CPU, memory, etc.). One drawback is that advertisements are a major source of revenue for many websites. However, the actual loss of revenue, when present, is difficult to measure.

Browser integration

Some web browsers support ad filtering through built-in features and plugins. A number of popular browsers include a pop-up blocker, such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox , Opera Software’s Opera, and Apple Computer’s Safari. All of these browsers support extensions and/or plugins which can include ad filters. For example, Adblock is a popular extension for Firefox.

External programs

A number of external applications offer ad filtering as a primary or additional feature. A traditional solution is to customize an HTTP proxy (or web proxy) to filter content. Proxies may reside on and serve a single computer or serve a number of clients over a network. These programs work by caching and filtering content before it is displayed in a user’s browser. This provides an opportunity to remove not only ads, but content which may be offensive or inappropriate. Popular proxy software which can be used as effective ad filters include: Privoxy, Squid, Proximodo, and Proxomitron.

Common advertising techniques

• Pop-up ads
• Plain text
• Ad banners
• Flash animations
• Keyword hyperlinks (for example Vibrant Media’s IntelliTXT[1])
• Browser plugins/extensions (often labeled as adware)
• External applications

Links

• An Adblock tool for Opera
• DoubleClick Warns Against Ad-Blocking Browsers
• JD’s proxomitron filterset

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Famous advertising agencies

BBDO — works with Anheuser-Busch, Visa, and PepsiCo.
Crispin Porter + Bogusky –famous for Subservient Chicken, works with Burger King, EarthLink, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Volkswagen
Doyle Dane Bernbach — created famous campaigns for Volkswagen (including the famous “Lemon” ad) and Avis Rental Cars (“We’re number 2. We try harder.”)
Goodby, Silverstein & Partners — famous for the “Got Milk?” campaign, among others
JWT (formerly J. Walter. Thompson) — works with Kelloggs, Unilever, Diageo.
The Martin Agency — UPS, GEICO, NASCAR, Miller (Lite, MGD), Hanes, and others
N.W. Ayer & Son — the first ad agency in the United States, coined “When it rains it pours” (Morton Salt), “A diamond is forever” (De Beers), “Reach out and touch someone” (AT&T), “Be all you can be” (United States Army), and others
Ogilvy & Mather — famous for the Rolls-Royce print ad with the headline “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”, among other ads
Saatchi and Saatchi — most famous for working with the Conservative Party especially during the 1979 general election (Maurice and Charles Saatchi later left and set-up M&C Saatchi)
TBWA\Chiat\Day — works with Apple Computer (including the “Think Different” campaign) and adidas. Responsible for creating the fcuk brand and (in the UK) Wonderbra advertising.
Partnership Advertising — responsible for developing the “loading cancer” ad that won the 2003 New York Festivals Finalists

Largest Advertising Groups

According to the Research Company Evaluating the Media Agency Industry, the 2004 top 6 largest advertising groups ranked by worldwide billings were the following:

WPP Group: $48.055 Billion
Publicis: $34.365 Billion
Interpublic: $27.870 Billion
Omnicom Group: $25.230 Billion
Aegis Group: $20.355 Billion
Havas: $8.775 Billion

Yahoo! results and its forecast for current-quarter sales pleased the investors; Yahoo’s shares boost almost 6% in extended trading after the market close. “It was a clean ‘beat’ quarter, you see signs of stabilization, which is very positive.” says Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst at financial services firm Collins Stewart.

As Business Week says, Yahoo, in the midst of a sweeping reorganization and rebranding campaign under CEO Carol Bartz since she joined in January, emphasized that the online advertising market is stabilizing.

In the third quarter, Yahoo earned $186.1 million in net profit, or 13¢ a share. That’s up from 4¢ a year ago. Gross revenue of $1.58 billion was down 12% from a year ago. Net revenue after commissions to advertising partners, a more closely watched metric, was $1.13 billion.

About 5¢ of the profit came from the sale of Yahoo’s stake in China’s Alibaba, but remaining results were still ahead of forecasts. The company was expected to earn 7¢ a share on gross revenues of $1.52 billion, or $1.12 billion after payments to advertising partners.

The problem remains the search engine market, Yahoo! continuing to loose ground to Google. Yahoo said it expects gross revenues of $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion in the fourth quarter. Operating income before depreciation, amortization, and stock-option costs is expected to be between $400 million and $450 million. Both of those are somewhat higher than Wall Street forecasts.

The creative department — the people who create the actual ads — form the core of an advertising agency. Modern advertising agencies usually form their copywriters and art directors into creative teams. Creative teams may be permanent partnerships or formed on a project-by-project basis. The art director and copywriter report to a creative director, usually a creative employee with several years of experience. Although copywriters have the word “write” in their job title, and art directors have the word “art”, one does not necessarily write the words and the other draw the pictures; they both generate creative ideas to represent the proposition (the advertisement or campaign’s key message).

The other major department in ad agencies is account services or account management. Account service employees work directly with clients and potential clients, soliciting business for the ad agency and determining what clients need and want the agency to do for them. They are also charged with understanding the clients business situation and representing those needs within the agency, so that ads can be brought to bear on the correct problem.

Previously, client services employees wrote the advertising strategy that the creative director (and teams ) would use to create the advertising. However, since the late 1960′s in the UK, and the mid-1980′s in the US, specialist account planners have been tasked with doing this. The account planner was originally employed to “represent the consumer” in the advertising i.e. find the best way to pitch the clients products to people but better understanding them, what they want and how to talk to them. Planning’s role has expanded considerably since it was originally introduced. Pleanners now brand strategists and, to a certain extent, media strategists – using consumer insights to understand where and how people are most receptive to certain messages.

The creative services department may not be so well known, but its employees are the people who have contacts with the suppliers of various creative media. For example, they will be able to advise upon and negotiate with printers if an agency is producing flyers for a client. However, when dealing with the major media (broadcast media, outdoor, and the press), this work is usually outsourced to a media agency which can advise on media planning and is normally large enough to negotiate prices down further than a single agency or client can.

In small agencies, employees may do both creative and account service work. Larger agencies attract people who specialize in one or the other, and indeed include a number of people in specialized positions: production work, [Internet] advertising, or research, for example.

An often forgotten, but extremely important, department within an advertising agency is traffic. Typically headed by a traffic manager (or system administrator), this department is responsible for a number of things. First and foremost is increasing agency efficiency and profitability through the reduction of false job starts, inappropriate job initiation, incomplete information sharing, over- and under-cost estimation, and the need for media extensions. In small agencies without a dedicated traffic manager, one employee may be responsible for managing workflow, gathering cost estimates and answering the phone, for example. Large agencies may have a traffic department of ten or more employees. Department size varies, but its importance remains the same.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for their clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client’s products or services. An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies and sales promotions for its clients.

Typical ad agency clients include businesses and corporations, non-profit organizations and government agencies. Agencies may be hired to produce single ads or, more commonly, ongoing series of related ads, called an advertising campaign.

Ad agencies come in all sizes, from small one- or two-person shops to large multi-national, multi-agency conglomerates such as Omnicom Group or WPP Group.

Some agencies specialize in particular types of advertising, such as print ads or television commercials. Other agencies, especially larger ones, produce work for many types of media (creating integrated marketing communications, or through-the-line (TTL) advertising). The “line”, in this case, is the traditional marker between media that pay a (traditionally 15%) commission to the agency (mainly broadcast media) and the media that do not.

Lately, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms have been classified by some as ‘agencies’ due to the fact that they are creating media and implementing media purchases of text based (or image based in some instances of search marketing) ads. This relatively young industry has been slow to adopt the term ‘agency’ however with the creation of ads (either text or image) and media purchases they do qualify technically as an ‘advertising agency’ as well as recent studies suggest that both SEO and SEM are set to outpace magazine spending in the next 3-5 years.

Not all advertising is created by agencies. Companies that create and plan their own advertising are said to do their work in house.

Links

• American Association of Advertising Agencies
• World Federation of Advertisers
• Adforum you can view advertising print work and spots
• Research Company Evaluating the Media Agency Industry

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

The display advertising portion of online advertising is increasingly dominated by rich media, generally using Adobe Flash. Rich media advertising techniques make overt use of color, imagery, page layout, and other elements in order to attract the reader’s attention. Some users might consider these ads as intrusive or obnoxious, because they can distract from the desired content of a webpage. Some examples of common rich media formats and the terms of art used within the industry to describe them:

• Interstitial or Expanding ad: The display of a page of ads before the requested content.
• Floating ad: An ad which moves across the user’s screen or floats above the content.
• Expanding ad: An ad which changes size and which may alter the contents of the webpage.
• Polite ad or Polite download: A method by which a large ad will be downloaded in smaller pieces to minimize the disruption of the content being viewed
• Wallpaper ad: An ad which changes the background of the page being viewed.

In addition, ads containing streaming video or streaming audio are becoming very popular with advertisers.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Because of the ability to track results of online advertising at a more granular level than what is available through traditional advertising, varying ways have developed for the advertisers and publishers to do business. The three most common ways in which online advertising is purchased are CPA, CPC, and CPM.

CPA (Cost Per Action) advertising is performance based and is common in the affiliate marketing sector of the business. In this payment scheme, the publisher takes all the risk of running the ad, and the advertiser only pays for the media on the basis of the number of users who complete a transaction, such as a purchase or sign-up.

CPC (Cost Per Click) advertising is also performance based and is common in search marketing, where it is often known as Pay per click (PPC). In this scheme, an advertisement may be displayed (and assumedly viewed) many times, but the advertiser only pays based on the number of user clicks. This system provides an incentive for publishers to target ads correctly (often by keyword), as the payment depends upon the ad not only being seen, but the viewer responding and following the hyperlink.

CPM (Cost per Thousand) advertising is the most common basis in the business and is used for most display advertising and rich media. This scheme most closely resembles offline advertising, wherein the advertiser is paying for exposure of their message to a specific audience. CPM costs are priced per thousand, so that a $1 CPM, means that the advertiser pays $1 for every thousand impressions.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.