Paid Placement

What is Paid Placement?

Paid placement is a program in which advertisers listings are guaranteed to appear on a Results Page when Keywords are searched. Paid Placement is also known as (PPC) or Pay per Click.

The ranking of paid placement listings is determined by competitive bidding. Different from Paid Inclusion listings paid placement listings are usually displayed separately from Natural Listings and are labeled as advertisements or sponsored links. Google and Bing Search Marketing are two of the largest paid placement search networks.

How it does PPC Work

PPC advertising works like a silent auction. Advertisers place bids on keywords or phrases that they think their target audience would type in a search field when they are looking for specific goods or services. When a web user types a search query into the field of a search engine that matches the advertiser’s keyword list or visits a web page with content that correlates to the keywords or phrases chosen by the advertiser, the PPC ad may be displayed on the page. In search engines, a PPC ad is generally just above or to the right of the search results where they can be easily seen. On other kinds of websites, the ad will be placed in the location that the site designer has determined will be the most advantageous to his site and the advertiser.

To differentiate PPC ads from the natural search results displayed on a page, search engines will often place PPC ads under “Sponsored Ads” or “Sponsored Links” which also makes them easier to notice on a page that is crowded with text and other items competing for a web user’s attention.

Benefits of Paid Placement

Paid Placements ads are beneficial to advertisers and web users alike. Advertisers get noticed by their target audience and are charged only for the times that their ads are clicked on. Web users get to select from sites that may be relevant to the page they are viewing without having to deal with an obnoxious banner or pop-up ads that flash and distract.

There is countless pay per click management services out there competing with each other but, without question, the heavyweights in PPC advertising are, in order:

• Google AdWords
• Microsoft adCenter

The rates that these groups charge for a PPC ad vary significantly depending on the popularity of the keyword or phrase.

It all comes down to supply and demand for the keywords and phrases that the advertiser wishes to target.