Google AdWords and AdSense

Google AdWords

are small text-only ads that sometimes appear on the right hand side or top of Google’s search results page when you do a search.

They are extraordinarily powerful - MUCH more so than you’d think at first sight - for 4 reasons.

1. They are 100% targeted: the advertiser chooses which keywords have to be entered before their ad is shown. This means that you can make your ad appear ONLY in front of people ACTIVELY LOOKING for information about a topic.
   
   You sell binoculars?
   
   Then you can set up your AdWords ads so that they show up ONLY when someone enters "Binoculars" into Google’s search box. You can also restrict your ad coverage to specific countries or even cities so you can focus your advertising budget geographically too. Yes, if you wanted, you could decide only to advertise your binoculars only to people living in Western Samoa.
   

2. You only pay for click throughs. If no one clicks on your ad you don’t pay anything but….
   

3. Google penalizes ads that don’t work well because it wants only ads that are RELEVANT to the searcher to be seen. Poorly performing ads get disabled automatically.
   
   

4. Google gives advertisers incredibly detailed near real-time response data so you can monitor and adjust your ads without wasting much money. Small changes in your ad, including Capitalising the first letter of some words, can have a Big Impact on your click through rates.
   
   (If you are new to AdWords, you can pick up an excellent introduction here)
   

Next: AdSense & Content-targeting

posted by Ahmad Faiz Besah @ 3:46 AM