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.

Search engine optimization aims to index and improve rankings for the webpages which are most relevant to the keywords searched for according to the algorithm of each search engine. The relevant pages are returned in search engine result pages (SERPS). Basically this is done by writing a naural copy of each page containing the keywords that genuinely represent the goods and the services described within the corresponding webpages. Keywords are also used in the Title Pages, Meta Tags, Headings within a density of about 6% i.e., about 6 keywords spread over a page containing 100 words.

In order to further fine tune the pages and keep them user and search engine friendly, the architecture of the website, including its internal link structure, navigation etc., are also suitably modified for human beings and search spiders to nevigate through whole wbsite pages. Search spiders then can scan all necessary data about the whole site and store in engines’ data base. A good navigation systems imparts excellent experience to the users and they tend to visit the site again and again. This a sign of good achievement.

Numbers of inbound links to the site and the ‘quality’ of the links determine the Reputation of the website within the industry it belong to. This Reputation is one of the most important criteria for search engines to consider higher levels of rank to the deserving webpages. Algorithms are evolutionary and strives to develop every day in an attempt to provide most relevant & useful pages to the users and strike out the websites that trick them and attain higher positions for a while.

These processes are known as Organic or Algorithmic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of websites. Eventually it is essential for each and every website to get optimized organically, though temprarity they can make use of Pay-per-Click (PPC) to market their website without having to wait for the results of Organic SEO. However, users still prefer Organic Result Pages than Pages for which Advertising charges are paid to search engines. So far for inclusion in Organic Result Pages no fees are prescribed except the high usefulness of the information to the users.

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

Litigation

Disputes over the issue have resulted in a number of lawsuits. In one case, Google (acting as both an advertiser and advertising network) won a lawsuit against a Texas company called Auction Experts (acting as a publisher), which Google accused of paying people to click on ads that appeared on Auction Experts’ site, costing advertisers $50,000[1]. Despite networks’ efforts to stop it, publishers are suspicious of the motives of the advertising networks, because the advertising network receives money for each click, even if it is fraudulent.

Solutions

Proving click fraud can be very difficult, since it is hard to know who is behind a computer and what their intentions are. Often, the best an advertising network can do is to identify which clicks are most likely fraudulent, and not charge the account of the advertiser. Ever more sophisticated means of detection are used, but none are foolproof.

The pay-per-click industry is lobbying for tighter laws on the issue. Many hope to have laws that will cover those not bound by contracts.

A number of companies are developing viable solutions for click fraud identification and are developing intermediary relationships with advertising networks. Such solutions fall into two categories:

a) Forensic analysis of advertisers’ web server log files

This analysis of the advertiser’s web server data requires an in-depth look at the source and behavior of the traffic. As industry standard log files are used for the analysis, the data is verifiable by advertising networks.

b) Third-party corroboration

Third parties offer web-based solutions that might involve placement of single-pixel images or Javascript on the advertiser’s web pages and suitable tagging of the ads. The visitor may be presented with a cookie. Visitor information is then collected in a third-party data store and made available for download. The better offerings make it easy to highlight suspicious clicks and they show the reasons for such a conclusion. Since an advertiser’s log files can be tampered with, their accompaniment with corroborating data from a third party forms a more convincing body of evidence to present to the advertising network.

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

Click fraud occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating an improper charge per click. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud whether they like it or not.

Use of a computer to commit this type of fraud is a felony in many jurisdictions, for example as covered by Penal code 502 in California and the Computer Misuse Act 1990 in the United Kingdom. There have been arrests relating to click fraud with regard to malicious clicking in order to deplete a competitor’s advertising budget.

In 2004, a California man created a software program that he claimed could let spammers defraud Google out of millions of dollars in fraudulent clicks. Authorities said he was arrested while trying to blackmail Google for $150,000 to hand over the program.

Links

• “Web start-ups vie to detect ‘click fraud’.” Wall Street Journal Online. Retrieved June 10, 2005.
• “Vendors release click-fraud detection tools.” eWeek. Retrieved March 4, 2005.
• “Click fraud roils search advertisers.” C|Net News.com. Retrieved March 4, 2005.
• “Mice Attack: Internet scammers steal money with ‘click fraud’.” Newsweek. Retrieved January 18, 2005.
• “Google CFO: Fraud a Big Threat.” CNN Money. Retrieved December 2, 2004.
• “Click fraud threatens web.” Wired News. Retrieved October 13, 2004.
• “How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet.” Wired Magazine, issue 14.01 (January 2006). Retrieved December 29, 2005.
• “Click fraud fears growing for online advertisers.” Times Online. Retrieved February 2006

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

Googletestad appears to stand for Google’s Test Ad which is used for live testing of their AdWords and AdSense pay-per-click (PPC) advertising system.

At the moment there are no define: googletestad definitions in Google’s database for this keyword.

The Google Test Ad

The following paid advertisement appears for a Google search on googletestad:

Popularity of googletestad as a Search Term

In June 2005, googletestad began appearing increasingly in the top search terms for search engines such as Yahoo! Search Marketing. and WordTracker.

In July 2005 this keyword was consistently in the top 30 searches as measured by WordTracker, and received over 100,000 searches according to Yahoo! Search Marketing thus:

• 72,161 searches – google googletestad monitor query
• 39,436 searches – googletestad
• 96 searches – foo google googletestad monitor query

The WordTracker Keywords Report dated August 9, 2005 (top 10 queries from the last 48 hours) reported:

• 1 jessica simpson (3377)
• 2 jessica alba (3314)
• 3 music lyrics (2679)
• 4 daniela hantuchova (1955)
• 5 paris hilton (1469)
• 6 playstation 2 cheats (1243)
• 7 xbox cheats (1231)
• 8 jokes (1069)

• googletestad (1048)

• 10 google (1013)

Regarding the keyword’s trend, back issues of that service’s Top 200 long-term keyword report (for the last 110 days) showed gaining popularity:

(date – rank, and count)

• August 9, 2005 – 55 (35,032)
• August 2, 2005 – 64 (32,737)
• July 26, 2005 – 94 (28,793)
• July 19, 2005 – 105 (24,878)

As of August 13th 2005, there were 12,800 hits found for googletestad in Google’s search engine.

Links

• Official Website
• Program Details and FAQ

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.

Pay per click, or PPC, is an advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines.

With search engines, pay per click advertisements are usually text ads placed near search results; when a site visitor clicks on the advertisement, the advertiser is charged a small amount. Variants include pay for placement and pay for ranking. Pay per click is also sometimes known as Cost Per Click (CPC).

While many companies exist in this space, Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing, which was formerly Overture, are the largest network operators as of 2006. MSN has started beta testing with their own PPC services MSN adCenter. Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0.01 (up to US$0.50). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Abuse of the pay per click model can result in click fraud. Click fraud is usually not detected very well by smaller PPC engines.

Categories

PPC engines can be categorized in “Keyword”, “Product”, “Service” engines. However, a number of companies may fall in two or more categories. More models are continually being developed.

Keyword PPCs

Advertisers using these bid on “keywords”, which can be words or phrases, and can include product model numbers. When a user searches for a particular word or phrase, the list of advertiser links appears in order of bidding.

As of 2005, notable PPC Keyword search engines include: Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, GaZabo.com, Miva, which was formerly FindWhat, SearchFeed, Enhance (formerly Ah-Ha), GoClick, 7Search, Kanoodle, ePilot, Search123, Kazazz, Pricethat, Search FAST and others.

An industry of professional services firms that can assist advertisers in marketing their products and services on search engines has also developed. Many of these firms will be members of various trade bodies such as IABUK, SMA-UK and SEMPO, while other reputable firms have chosen to avoid these bodies, as many of them remain heavily biased toward the firms that first got together and founded them.

Product PPCs

“Product” engines let advertisers provide “feeds” of their product databases and when users search for a product, the links to the different advertisers for that particular product appear, giving more prominence to advertisers who pay more, but letting the user sort by price to see the lowest priced product and then click on it to buy. These engines are also called Product comparison engines or Price comparison engines.

Some of the PPC Product search engines are: BizRate, NexTag, PriceGrabber, Pricescan, Pricethat, Pricewatch, PriceLeap, Shopping.com

Service PPCs

“Service” engines let advertisers provide feeds of their service databases and when users search for a service offering links to advertisers for that particular service appear, giving prominence to advertisers who pay more, but letting users sort their results by price or other methods. Some Product PPCs have expanded into the service space while other service engines operate in specific verticals.

Examples of PPC services include NexTag, Pricethat SideStep, and TripAdvisor.

Pay per Call

Similar to pay per click, pay per call is a business model for ad listings in search engines and directories that allows publishers to charge local advertisers on a per-call basis for each lead (call) they generate. The term “pay per call” is sometimes confused with “click to call”[1]. Click-to-call, along with call tracking, is a technology that enables the “pay-per-call” business model.

According to the Kelsey Group, the pay-per-phone-call market is expected to reach US$3.7 billion by 2010.

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

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Internet marketing is the use of the Internet to advertise and sell goods and services. Internet Marketing includes pay per click advertising, banner ads, e-mail marketing, search engine marketing (including search engine optimization), blog marketing, and article marketing.

Definition and Scope

Internet marketing is a component of electronic commerce. Internet marketing can include information management, public relations, customer service, and sales. Electronic commerce and Internet marketing have become popular as Internet access is becoming more widely available and used. Well over one third of consumers who have Internet access in their homes report using the Internet to make purchases.

History

Internet marketing first began in the early 1990s as simple, text-based websites that offered product information. It then evolved into advertisements complete with graphics. The most recent step in this evolution was the creation of complete online businesses that use the Internet to promote and sell their services and goods.

Business Models and Formats

Internet marketing is associated with several business models. The main models include business-to-business and business-to-consumer (B2C). B2B consists of companies doing business with each other, whereas B2C involves selling directly to the end consumer. When Internet marketing first began, the B2C model was first to emerge. B2B transactions were more complex and came about later. A third, less common business model is peer-to-peer (P2P), where individuals exchange goods between themselves. An example of P2P is Napster, which is built upon individuals sharing files.

Internet marketing can also be seen in various formats. One version is name-your-price (e.g. Priceline.com). With this format, customers are able to state what price range they wish to spend and then select from items at that price range. With find-the-best-price websites (e.g. Hotwire.com), Internet users can search for the lowest prices on items. A final format is online auctions (e.g. Ebay.com) where buyers bid on listed items.

Benefits

Some of the benefits associated with Internet marketing include the availability of information. Consumers can log onto the Internet and learn about products, as well as purchase them, at any hour. Companies that use Internet marketing can also save money because of a reduced need for a sales force. Overall, Internet marketing can help expand from a local market to both national and international marketplaces.

Limitations

Limitations of Internet marketing create problems for both companies and consumers. Slow Internet connections can cause difficulties. If companies put too much information on their website, Internet users may struggle to load the web page. Also, Internet marketing does not allow shoppers to touch or try-on items before purchasing them.

Security Concerns

For both companies and consumers that participate in online business, security concerns are very important. Many consumers are hesitant to buy items over the Internet because they do not trust that their personal information will remain private. Recently, some companies that do business online have been caught giving away or selling information about their customers. Several of these companies have guarantees on their websites, claiming customer information will be private. By selling customer information, these companies are breaking their own, publicized policy. Some companies that buy customer information offer the option for individuals to have their information removed from the database (known as opting out). However, many customers are unaware that their information is being shared and are unable to stop the transfer of their information between companies.

Security concerns are of great importance and online companies have been working hard to create solutions. Encryption is one of the main methods for dealing with privacy and security concerns on the Internet. Encryption is defined as the conversion of data into a form called a cipher. This cipher cannot be easily intercepted unless an individual is authorized by the program or company that completed the encryption. In general, the stronger the cipher, the better protected the data is. However, the stronger the cipher, the more expensive encryption becomes.

Effects on Industries

Internet marketing has had a large impact on several industries including music, banking, and flea markets. In the music industry, many consumers have begun buying and downloading MP3s over the Internet instead of simply buying CDs. The debate over the legality of downloading MP3s has become a major concern for those in the music industry.

Internet marketing has also affected the banking industry. More and more banks are offering the ability to perform banking tasks online. Online banking is believed to appeal to customers because it is more convenient then visiting bank branches. Currently, over 50 million U.S. adults now bank online. Online banking is now the fastest-growing Internet activity. The increasing speed of Internet connections is the main reason for the fast-growth. Of those individuals who use the Internet, 44% now perform banking activities over the Internet.

As Internet auctions have gained popularity, flea markets are struggling. Unique items that could previously be found at flea markets are being sold on Ebay.com instead. Ebay.com has also affected the prices in the industry. Buyers and sellers often look at prices on the website before going to flea markets and the Ebay.com price often becomes what the item is sold for. More and more flea market sellers are putting their items up for sale online and running their business out of their homes.

Recent Issues

In November 2004, a lawsuit was filed against Bonzi Buddy software. The lawsuit alleged that Bonzi’s banner ads were deceptive. These ads often looked like Microsoft Windows message boxes. Internet users would run across the ads and when they attempted to close the boxes, they found themselves redirected to a website determined by Bonzi.

On May 27, 2005, Bonzi Buddy agreed to change the format of its ads so they did not resemble Windows message boxes. The boxes will now contain the word “Advertisement” so computer users know what they are looking at. The boxes will also no longer carry buttons that do not perform the correct actions.

Sales tax issues have also recently become debated. The current laws require that buyers of online products pay their state all due taxes on these goods at the end of the year, along with their other state taxes. However, most consumers do not appear to be making these payments. Thirteen states have now begun encouraging Internet businesses to collect sales tax on every sale. These states are currently not forcing the companies to collect the tax. However, it appears that if companies do not begin collecting the sales tax on their own, states will begin forcing the companies to do so. The states are claiming that each year they lose $15 billion in unpaid sales taxes associated with online purchases.

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

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Smith and Chaffey (2001) describe five key online marketing activities (the ’5Ss’) which can be applied by an organisation to implement various online marketing tactics. For example, for an e-newsletter, the 5Ss are:

• Sell – Grow sales (the e-newsletter often acts as both a customer acquisition tool and a retention tool – the lastminute.com e-newsletter has this dual role)
• Serve – Add value (give customers extra benefits online such as an online exclusive offer or more in-depth information about your products or the industry sector)
• Speak – Get closer to customers by creating a dialogue, asking questions through online research surveys and learning about customers’ preferences through tracking – which content are people most interested in.
• Save – Save costs (of print and post if you have a traditional offline e-newsletter can you reduce print runs or extend it to those customers you can’t afford to communicate with)
• Sizzle – Extend the brand online. A newsletter keeps the brand ‘front-of-mind’ and helps reinforce brand values. Added value can also be delivered by the e-newsletter by informing and entertaining customers.

Capturing attention of potential customers can be as simple as advertising using some of the new advertising tools the online world provides, such as advertising on search engines, but it can also be about configuring more remarkable methods that tend to spread across many sites and capturing the imagination of many people in the process. There are at least three major configurations of links and tools that have been used to capture attention online: funnel building, buzz marketing and cool tools.

Building a sales funnel requires working with search engine optimization, email newsletter distribution, discussion board entries, advertisements, affiliate activities and more. In fact, any way that additional links can be provided so that a potential customer can begin a conversation with a business, is educated about that business’ products/services, or is provided with concepts and propositions that will eventually lead to a sale. A funnel is usually laid down over time and is the result of continuous activity of marketers in online activities.

Buzz marketing tends to be a much quicker process and tends to involve less activity on behalf of marketers and requires attention of people online to spread by word-of-mouth, word-from-keyboards, to be fascinated or intrigued. Purple cow was sold largely through buzz marketing that spread by blogs relatively quickly.

Another tactic of gaining attention online is through the development and release of a cool tool. A cool tool is something that captures the imagination of the online browsing public and it is thought to be so cool that it should be shared with online friends. This could be a video clip, standalone software that is cute such as a cartoon character that lives on a users screen, or some other device that is used often for a specific purpose, such as 3Ms Post-it Notes.

Right in the middle of a new marketing practice is eBay with its datafeed marketing. Essentially a store owner sets up his/her data in eBay and then by way of feeds make this data available to advertising avenues, such as Froogle, Yahoo Product Search and about another twenty of thirty other sites that take datafeeds. All the advertising feed services point the prospective purchaser to the eBay auction. This is perhaps a little like building a sales funnel as described above, however, it uses a specific technology that enables ease of use.

Marketing on the internet requires that one be found using keyword searches or some form of online advertising. In any case the trick to being successful in Online Marketing is being found within the top 30 search results. There are 3 ways that one can be found. 1.) natural search engine ranking (70% of searchers will skip over sponsored results and start with the naturally ranked sites) 2.) Paid inclusion and 3.) Pay per click. Due to the extreme difficulty of achieving a natural high ranking on a major search engine most companies opt for #’s 2 and 3 for their online marketing. Unfortunately the 3rd option is very costly and only the most well heeled companies can afford to market online via pay per click.

What is true of Online Marketing today is that one must pay to play. Since the dot com bust several years ago search engines have discerned that in order to survive and thrive they must generate significant revenue. At first the hope was that banner advertising would be sufficient to fill the search engine coffers but it soon became evident that searchers did not respond to banners. It then became evident that there were 2 primary ways to create income for search engines and online directories. Thus paid inclusion and pay per click were born!

Recently potential greed-related challenges have emerged. There are companies that create false hits and traffic. Most recently Google has been sued for click fraud. [1] Whether or not the charges prove to be true, actions like this make people think twice about using pay per click as part of their online marketing package.

Semantic logic will allow searchers to use not just keywords to search, but rather they will search using common language. This is a big departure from the crude Boolean logic which has served the Internet searching community for the last decade.

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

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Amazon at the Affiliate Meet Market

Early days

In the early days of affiliate marketing, there was very little control over what affiliates were doing, which was abused by a large number of affiliates. Affiliates used false advertisements, trademark bidding on search engines, forced clicks to get tracking cookies set on users’ computers, and Adware. Many affiliate programs were poorly managed.

This changed dramatically over the last few years for multiple reasons. Revenue generated online grew quickly. The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the web, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business. Many companies hired outside affiliate management companies to manage the affiliate program.

When Google, the most popular search engine on the Internet, introduced AdWords (pay-per-click advertising pioneered by Goto.com, then Overture.com and now Yahoo! Search Marketing) many Merchants became aware of the issue of trademark bidding by affiliates. The terms of service were quickly modified by most merchants and structures were put in place to monitor affiliate activities.

Adware

Adware is still an issue today, but affiliate marketers have taken steps to fight it. Merchants usually had no clue what adware was, what it does and how it was damaging their brand. Affiliate marketers became aware of the issue much quicker, especially because they noticed that adware often overwrites their tracking cookie and results in a decline of commissions. Affiliates who do not use adware became enraged by adware, which they felt was stealing hard earned commission from them. Adware usually has no valuable purpose or provides any useful content to the often unaware user that has the adware running on his computer. Affiliates discussed the issues in various affiliate forums such as ABestWeb and started to get organized. It became obvious that the best way to cut off adware was by discouraging merchants from advertising via adware. Merchants that did not care or even supported adware were made public by affiliates, which damaged the merchants’ reputations and also hurt the merchants’ general affiliate marketing efforts. Many affiliates simply “canned” the merchant or switched to a competitor’s affiliate program. Eventually, affiliate networks were also forced by merchants and affiliates to take a stand and ban adware publishers from their network.

The new Web

The rise of blogging, interactive online communities and other new technologies, web sites and services based on the concepts that are now called Web 2.0 have impacted the affiliate marketing world as well. The new media allowed merchants to get closer to their affiliates and improved communication between each other. New portals like Return on Affiliates allow affiliates, merchants, and networks to interconnect easily, on a professional and a personal level.

New developments have made it harder for unscrupulous affiliates to make money. Emerging black sheep are detected and made known to the affiliate marketing community with much greater speed and efficiency.

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

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