Online Advertising

Online advertising has many advantages over traditional advertising.
  • You pay nothing if your ad doesn't perform
  • You decide your budget, not the advertiser
  • Immediately track results, analyze and adjust your campaign​


THE BENEFITS OF ONLINE ADVERTISING
  • Payment options based on performance. You can pay by viewers who see your ad, by those who actually respond to it or by those who respond with a specific action.
  • You set the budget. You can choose the total budget per day, break it up by keyword, mobile or desktop viewing, or by specific ads in the same campaign. In short, there are a lot of ways to pick and choose exactly how much you want to spend.
  • Immediately track results. You can track the response to your ads like it's streaming live. That's because it is. 
  • Multimedia Friendly. Imagine, you can run video ads on a traditional page of text.  You can animate your ads, use only text, or even set your ad to automatically fit dozens of formats. Properly formatted ads can be placed on a wide range of different websites. 
  • Analytics. There are so many ways to study the results of your ads that it's become a niche skill by itself. You can find out who is viewing your ads, what they searched for, what their interests are for viewing your ad, and even what they did after they viewed your ad. This allows you to adjust your future advertising investments. 
  • A/B testing. You can test two different ads simultaneously and improve your success rate by regularly running tests and selecting the winner. Tests can include button color, text, images, placement, keywords, headlines, fonts...


THE FEATURES OF ONLINE ADVERTISING
  • Ads can be changed within 24 hours. If something's not working, cancel it.
  • Budgets can be increased or decreased within 24 hours. No reason to be stuck with an underperforming ad, or miss out on extra profit from successful one.
  • An extensive list of interests to target. Select a wide range then toss out the losers. Keep only the interest groups that are responding to your ads. 
  • Analytics can be selected to suit your needs. Looking for teenagers on mobile interested in pizza within a mile of your shop? This is easy to setup and see the results. 
  • A/B testing. You can let survival of the fittest improve your ads one test at a time.​
  • Guaranteed good placement. It's easy to get your ad placed where it will be seen.
HOW ONLINE ADVERTISING SAVES YOU TIME & MONEY

​Look at the screen grab results for "How to make a movie."

Only the bottom left three listings are "organic." So all the time and expense for the right SEO, all those consultants for all those customers, really are all competing for just three places on page one. And all three places are at the bottom of the page.

By contrast, we invested $5 a day and appeared in the top three spaces. Chances are an SEO "expert" would have charged more money with fewer results.

You may have heard, "People read organic but ignore ads." That's true...if they're not interested in what is being offered. However, if someone is searching for "how to make a movie," they may actually prefer clicking on an ad that offers exactly what they're searching for. 

​Conclusion: it's more economical and efficient to buy a Google ad than to spend money on an "organic" search.
HOW USING THE RIGHT KEYWORDS HELPS YOUR AUDIENCE FIND YOU
​
​Using keywords properly involves matching what the audience is searching for, using the same words in your ads, and of course, using those words on your website. Google will actually lower your advertising rate when you do a good job of helping the searcher find what they're looking for.

​But don't think you can game the system by dumping lots of "keywords" into your text. Google has invested a fortune and has full-time staff constantly adjusting the search engine to help the searcher find what they're looking for. If your website is a facade of "keywords," you will lose to a website which provides substantial information to help the searcher. When it comes to online advertising, honesty really is the best policy. ​
DISPLAY NETWORK ADVERTISING PLACES YOU ANYWHERE AND EVERYWHERE

​No doubt you've seen all those ads before. Well, you can literally choose which websites, which pages, and which topics you want your ads to appear. 

You can sometimes place your advertisement on your competitor's page! Millions of websites earn money by allowing Google to place ads on heir sites.

So the more you know about your potential audience's interests, the more you can target your ads to be there when they visit. And with "remarketing" your ad can appear on the next site they visit as well saying, "Hi there, remember me?"

The point is, using your imagination, you can test where that elusive audience is visiting. For example, if you sell "peanut butter" you might want your display ad to appear on websites selling "jelly."

By the way, the display network ads on the left are automatically generated by Google. When you're placing an ad, this service is provided free so your ad can fit into a wide range of website spaces.
YOUTUBE ADVERTISING, PERHAPS THE BEST DEAL GOING

​YouTube advertising is incredibly inexpensive, pennies per view, and you only pay if they view your video. 

​It's different from AdWord searches because watchers are looking for general topics and may not know your topic is available. That's why movie companies advertise here- to create awareness of their product. 

Youtube can be targeted by genre of where you'd like it placed. And by geography, among other options. Getting some 5,000 views for $5-10 a day can make people aware of what you're offering. ​