Pay-Per-Click Advertising: What Makes it Click

Well, paid search, of course.Also known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising, experts forecast $14 billion dollar revenue in paid search sales this year alone, not to mention an astounding 37% growth rate annually for the years to come.But then, what in the world is PPC?PPC definedPPC is an advertising method used on websites, search engines, and advertising networks.Advertisers usually pay a specific rate that they specified for each visitor who will click by means of the search engine website or its affiliates to their website. Advertisers bid on various keywords (e.g. cellular phone, foot spa, etc.) which they think a certain group of people would type using the search bar when looking for a particular service or product.  The advertisements are popularly known as sponsored ads or sponsored links, which usually appears next to or above the organic or natural results on the webpage.Paying every time a user clicks on an ad, the advertisers decide on their budget. They also need a ready website and a credit card, and voila! They are on their way to advertise on the top websites in the Internet in a flash.Numerous advertisers attest to the enjoyment of advertising using PPC, not only because it is simple, but also they got a bigger control over their advertisement campaign and they obtain better response on its operation. The growing significance of marketing online causes PPC to be considered as an important field, with CEOís heading the PPC promotion of their own companies.While there are numerous companies that exist in the web, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture) and Google AdWords are currently the largest system operators. MSN follows suit, beta testing its own PPC service, the MSN adCenter. PPC CategoriesPPC engines have three categories: Keyword, Product, and Service.KeywordKeywords that advertisers bid on can be words and phrases, as well as model numbers of various products. When a visitor uses one of these words or phrases for searching, a list of links for advertisers will appear ñ the order depending on the bid price.  Keywords, also known as search terms, are very important in PPC advertising. It is no surprise then that these terms are protected and regarded as valuable business secrets by advertisers, such that numerous firms provide software and/or services to aid advrtisers in developing keyword techniques.  The most notable keyword search engines are:    Google AdWords    Yahoo! Search Marketing (used to be Overture)    Miva (used to be FindWhat)    Ask (used to be Ask Jeeves)    LookSmart    Microsoft adCenter    7Search     Baidu    KanoodleProductAlso known as Price Comparison engines or Product Comparison engines,  Product engines allow advertisers to offer feeds of the databases of their products. These engines also permit visitors to look for a specific product, prioritizing those advertisers who pay more, and allow them to sort the products by price to find out which is the least expensive, click on the product, and purhase it.The most notable product search engines are:    NexTag    Shopzilla.com    BizRate.com    Shopping.com    PriceGrabber.comServiceService engines permit advertisers to give feeds of the databases of their services. These engines also allow visitors to look for a specific service they want, prioritizing those advertisers who pay more, and allow them to sort the services by price or any another way to find out which they prefer.  The most notable service engines are:    NexTag    SideStep    TripAdvisor