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Exploring pay per click advertising (activity)

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

November 20, 2005 [2897 views]

Down the right hand side of Google’s search results are Pay-Per-Click or PPC adverts. The adverts shown are related to the keyword you have typed. Type in keywords related to your case study and look at how the adverts change.

A search for Kingston generates the following ads…

Virgin Holidays: Jamaica

Research and Book to Jamaica
with Virgin Holidays. Save Online
www.virginholidays.co.uk

Holidays to Jamaica

Great deals on holidays to Jamaica
Book & save online at First Choice.
www.firstchoice.co.uk

Kingston Properties

UK's Property Search Website. Find
Kingston Properties Now.
www.PropertyFinder.com
England

Flash Memory -Crucial.com

Shop at Crucial.com for quality and
Excellent prices. Buy Now and Save.
Crucial.com/UK

Look at the adverts themselves. They are made up of a headline, two short lines of text and a link (actually two links – a visible one, usually short and a hidden longer one that actually takes you to a specific location on the site).

Try making small changes to the phrase being searched to see how the ads change

Compare broad and more detailed searches.

Kingston
Kingston property
Kingston rental property
Kingston memory
cheap Kingston memory

This week’s activity asks you to look at your case study site and plan the start of a pay-per-click advertising campaign for the site. PPC advertising allows you to pay only when an ad is actually clicked (not when shown) and can result in highly qualified traffic. The best known PPC advertising is Google adwords although MSN and Yahoo both offer similar programs (and will do more in the future).

The steps this week are

What keyword or keyphrase would you buy? (choose the main one and some variations)
What ad would you show? Read Google adwords guidelines and write an adword text ad.
What page would you link to on the site?
What changes might you make to the site to make the ad more effective?
How much would you be willing to pay for each click? (guess if you don’t know)
How much would you expect the average customer to spend per order? (guess if you don’t know)
What percentage of the customers who come from a PPC keyword campaign would you expect to make an order? (guess if you don’t know)
What questions do you have about advertising online?
Any other comments or questions about the module?

We will look behind the scenes of PPC advertising during this week’s lecture but in order to get the most out of it, please complete the above activity by midnight on Thursday,

Here is the survey to feedback your answers (but prepare them in Word first).

Recent comments:

On November 21, 2005 at 1:11 PM, Senthurran wrote:

What does the 'casestudy' means here? is it the actual case study that we going to do at the end of this module or the one of two sites given by you?

thank you.

Jonathan replies: The case study is the one you are preparing for the exam.

On November 22, 2005 at 1:14 PM, Mital wrote:

Jonathan, I have picked a website, which I know can be improved a vast amount. But completing the exercise last week on “understanding search engine” I got to realise that the site I have chosen, many of the keyword/s I entered came up quite highly in search results. On most searches, the site came under sponsored links. Do you think it would be feasible in preparing a case study for this site, knowing it does well in search results? If possible, I would also be grateful if you could explain how sponsored links work on different search engines in your lecture.

Cheers!

Jonathan replies: yes certainly. As you will see this week, companies that can improve their organic results (left hand side) need to spend less on Pay Per Click (PPC). This saves companies money.

On November 24, 2005 at 10:12 AM, Mitul wrote:

I just found a useful site about Google and how it is affecting competitors:

http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.12/google.html

What do you think?

Add your comments

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This site is an educational resource, a research project and a publication channel written by Jonathan Briggs, Professor of eCommerce at Kingston University.
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