While there may be no doubt that it is a really good ad network, one cannot argue the fact that Google AdWords is extremely expensive and is not affordable by everyone. The online industry is a mix of large and small businesses, while large companies are easily able to cover the huge costs by generating a high return on investment; small businesses aren’t so lucky and may feel that AdWords service is way out of their budget.
Not meaning to undermine the AdWords program by Google in any way, because let’s face it, it is the most popular and effective network for advertising. However, there are plenty of online advertising networks alternative to Google AdWords. Not only do these advertising platforms offer incredible services to promote your business but they also boost traffic to your website.
Here, take a look at a few of the alternatives to AdWords.
BuySellAds
Founded in 2008, BuySellAds is one of the largest advertising networks. The network operates in the traditional banner ads and is widely popular among renowned bloggers who wish to sell space for adverts. The BuySellAds team claims that they sell around 6 billion ads each month.
Here’s how BuySellAds is a great network to place your ads through:
-The advertising process is as simple as it gets. Once you have registered yourself for a free account, you can browse premium listing of blogs and websites and screen them for placing your ads.
-The sites and blogs are of high authority and good quality. BSA works with various well known and reputable publishers like Atlantic, Newsweek, IBT Media etc.
-Advertisers have a lot of scope to display their ads – whether it be sponsored content, media buys or custom unit opportunities.
-You can even advertise on Twitter via sponsored or promoted tweet through BSA.
-As an advertiser, you only have to pay a flat rate and not worry about extra charges in the form of commission.
Thus, BuySellAds is a very useful and convenient service for advertisers.
7Search
With a minimum deposit of mere $25, 7Search is an extremely popular advertising network in the sense that advertisers find it extremely cost-effective. It works similar to how other PPC (pay-per-click) networks do by bidding on keywords that you want to use in order to generate traffic to your site.
Even though, compared to Google AdWords and other 1st tier advertising platforms you may find 7Search a bit lacking in terms of the relatively low traffic it generates – it has many benefits to offer to its advertisers.
-At $25, it has an extremely cheap deposit.
-In order to set up your advertising campaign, you simply have to enter information related to add, build a keyword list via keyword tool and submit.
-Advertisers can directly link to affiliate offers.
-The keyword list is extensive and also the keyword tool is extremely easy to use.
Despite so many complaints regarding fraudulent clicks on 7Search, it continues to be a good advertising network to gain traffic.
Facebook Paid Ads
While you may be aware of Facebook as a social media platform to connect and interact with customers, most of the people are oblivious to the fact that Facebook is also an extremely effective platform to run and manage ad campaigns. With 1.55 million monthly active users and an estimated count of 968 million users visiting the site daily, Facebook advertising has a far reaching potential.
-Facebook Ad Program offers much better features than Google AdWords in terms of targeting. You can select a range of categories and criteria to choose from, be it gender, income, geographical location, spending habits etc.
-Many features on Facebook like custom audience and lookalike audience allows advertisers to select and target customers relatively easily. Under custom audience, rather than targeting random masses, it allows you to target people with whom you already have some sort of a relationship. On the other hand, lookalike audience lets you target people from another well known audience segment who share similar characteristics.
-Facebook paid ads are simple, straightforward yet captivating.
Therefore, Facebook is a brilliant platform to advertise as it allows businesses and companies to reach an expansive audience while keeping the ads relatable to your potential audience, thanks to the unique targeting features it offers.
LinkedIn DirectAds
LinkedIn DirectAds Program is a form of a PPC ad campaigns. This PPC alternative functions similar to how Facebook’s Paid Ads work. Despite being a bit expensive with a minimum cost of $2 per click, the benefits it offers are insurmountable.
-Compared to Google AdWords, LinkedIn Ads cost merely a small fraction of what an advertiser is required to pay for their advertising campaign on AdWords.
-Even though the audience you may find on LinkedIn is limited to the users who use LinkedIn regularly, it is entirely void of any potential erroneous clicks.
-Since LinkedIn is a social networking site, you can target customers based on a range of categories like geographical location, education, workplace, industry etc. These targeting techniques help advertisers insulate themselves from erroneous clicks of competitors etc.
LinkedIn generates substantial ROI (return on investment) for B2B marketers when it comes to pay per click advertising. However, because of certain financial ramifications it has, it is strongly recommended that marketers closely monitor their ad campaign and practice a certain amount of caution when registering for its DirectAds program. All in all, LinkedIn is a great platform for businesses who are seeking to market their products to other businesses.
Twitter – Sponsored Tweets
Twitter, another social networking channel, offers marketers and advertisers the opportunity to run their ads in the form of sponsored or promoted tweets. Similar to advertising on Google, Twitter also operates its sponsored tweets on a cost per engagement (CPE) basis or more like pay-per-tweet. This means that whenever a user clicks, likes, retweets or replies to the sponsored tweet, the advertiser or the subscriber pays a certain amount.
Here’s how businesses can benefit from and take advantage of sponsored tweets.
-With sponsored tweets, you are likely to captivate the attention of your desired audience immediately as they are placed on top of the user’s timeline to ensure greater visibility.
-You no longer have to worry about reaching more people and building more followers as Twitter takes care of it. This is because Twitter will find other users who are similar to your targeted audience and display the sponsored tweets to them.
-Twitter has introduced a new feature to its advertising program – targeted tweets. This feature allows marketers to define certain characteristics of the audience like the geographical location where they want to run and display their sponsored tweets.
In order to run your own sponsored tweets on Twitter, you can register here.
YouTube Ads
Being the second largest source to rank on search engine, as well as the third most visited website on the web, YouTube Ads offer incredible outreach and benefits to businesses.
While Google AdWords work on pay-per-click basis, YouTube, being a video viewing platform is slightly different in the sense that YouTube Ads work on a pay-per-view model. There are a variety of ways your ads can be displayed on YouTube – whether it’s search results, related videos or embedded players – your ads can appear almost anywhere.
-Marketers can run video ads on YouTube which have a much better chance to enthrall and entice the audience.
-You can reach your target audience whenever they search video content on YouTube.
-Specific targeting based on the gender, geographical location, age etc. is offered by YouTube to its advertisers.
-Further, since YouTube is a product of Google Inc, it allows advertisers to integrate their YouTube ad campaign with Google AdWords.
-If your ads are striking, it can further drive engagement through video shares, comments and subscriptions.
Since YouTube supports video ads, it is likely to be more effective as videos make it easier for audience to get a detailed information on products.
Yahoo! and Bing Ads – Microsoft
Like Google, the Yahoo! Bing Network is a large platform which offers an incredible advertising service. Yahoo! and Bing are not only direct competitors of Google in the advertising services they offer, but also as the search engines.
Though it’s not a cheap alternative to Google AdWords by any chance, it is immensely popular among marketers and advertisers because of the benefits it provides. Further, the support service by Yahoo! and Bing Network is spectacular in the sense that instead of automated replies, there are real people behind the screen who reply with effective and helpful tips in case of any problem faced by the advertiser. Despite low traffic you, you can expect a good ROI as the impact and quality of the ad is very high.
BlogAds
BlogAds, as the name itself suggests, displays ads on popular blogs. It is a perfect ad network for small businesses which focus on a niche market. In a world where blogs have taken over the traditional forums and have redefined their purpose by becoming a hub for socializing and sharing thoughts, it was about time that someone came up with ad campaigns to run on blogs.
-BlogAds not only runs and displays ads on popular blogs, but also on social media.
-They offer an extensive range of ad types to their clients to choose from including IAB banners, custom skins, native advertising and much more.
-Their team also offers creative ways to boost their ad campaign through striking videos, intriguing images, apps etc.
Infolinks
Infolinks is a great place if you are looking for in-text advertising on websites and blogs. Many businesses, specially website owners and blog owners have turned to infolinks to promote, advertise and monetise their blogs. Even though it requires advertisers to spend at least $15 a month, it still remains an immensely powerful ad network. Not to mention that compared to many other advertising networks who are obscenely expensive, $15 a month seems quite reasonable.
-Infolinks generates high click through rates (CTRs).
-It is a great medium to promote quality content.
-Infolinks easily integrates within your blogs and sites.
-Setting up Infolinks and adjusting settings is easy and doesn’t impact the quality of the service.
However, if you are considering Infolinks for advertising, it is important that you ensure that your site is of high quality.
Clicksor
Though not the cheapest advertising network with a minimum of 5 cents per click, Clicksor is also not, what one may call an expensive ad service. It boasts a large network of advertisers. While it is similar to Infolinks in the sense that it also offers In-Text advertising, its advertising services go beyond contextual ads. These ad services include image ads, flash banners, animated banners, interstitials, pop-unders and much more.
However, many people are not satisfied with Clicksor’s Conversion Tracking implementation which is found lacking – they feel that it could use some modification. Also, Clicksor is known to serve malware ads often. Thus, while Clicksor may be one of the largest network for advertising, it is recommended that you be careful of potential malware bugs.
None of the above mentioned ad networks can possibly take precedence over others. Because each business and company varies from another, they require different sort of advertising campaigns. Thus, it is only you who can decide upon the best advertising network based on your needs and requirements. Whatever network you may choose though, remember to keep a track of, and measure conversions so that you know if the ad network of your choosing is delivering results or not.
We understand that selecting the right method can be difficult and at times one ends up wasting huge sums on advertising with poor results. However, all this can be controlled with the right PPC management company, such as AOK Marketing. We can plan your marketing campaign within your set budget and come up with a plan that works best for you.
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