A Comprehensive Look At The Past, Present, And Future Of PPC
Pay per click advertising has seen lots of changes in a relatively short period of time. If you are wondering what the long-term future holds, that is difficult to foresee in times of a boom in emerging technology. To get a better idea, we will first take a close look at what it is, what it does, where it has been, what the immediate future looks like, and what long-terms prospects could be.
What Is Pay Per Click?
Pay per click (PPC) is one way advertisements are done on the internet. Typically, the advertisers pay the publisher, or web site owner, an amount when an ad is clicked that directs traffic to their web site. They are sometimes known as banner ads, and they tell the users something about just how effective the campaign is. There are flat rate PPCs, and bid-based PPCs, and this model has been in place since 1996.
In addition to listings on web sites, search engines, including Google, allow for individuals and businesses to buy listings that show up when a person does a search on a specific word or phrase. These listings appear along with their search results. These PPC ads are often bid on for the keyword search they will appear on, and can become quite expensive.
The History of PPC
To get an accurate reading on just where PPC will go in the future, you need to understand just where it has been in the past. The first documented PPC ad was part of a web directory called Planet Oasis. It was made in the form of a desktop application, and it had links to commercial web sites, and other web sites that were informative in nature.
It was developed by Ark Interface II. At the time, this was a division of the Packard Bell NEC Computer Company. Most people were initially very skeptical of the PPC model, but by the end of 1997, it was obvious the model was working even better than it was intended. By then, over 400 major brands were paying up to $.25 per click to be placed there.
More started happening in very short order. In early 1998, an employee of Goto.com, later known as Overture, came up with a PPC search engine concept and introduced it at a California conference. This was the genesis of the PPC ad system that exists today. Search engine advertising was initiated in late 1999 by Google. It was not until late 2000 that Google AdWords system was created. This development allowed advertisers to create simple text ads that could be placed on pages with Google search engine results.
The modern PPC system we have today was introduced in 2002. Up until this point in time, ads were charged at a cost per thousand impressions, also known as a cost per mile, or CPM.
Among the top PPC providers today, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, and Google AdWords operate with a bid based model. Certain popular keywords and phrases command higher bids than others. In 2010, Microsoft and Yahoo combined in an effort to compete with Google for search results. Yahoo began using Microsoft’s Bing as their search engine on their web site.
They called their joint PPC effort AdCenter, and this combined network allows AdCenter ads to display banner and text ads on their sites that are referred to as BingAds.
Their efforts have for the most part been only marginally effective. Google is still by far the top search engine used today, with more PPC ads than any of their competition by far. But, do not count out Microsoft just yet. With the tremendous amount of capital they have for investment, chances are, they are not yet done with making a run at Google in the future.
Why PPC IS A Good Practice
PPC is an excellent way to garner immediate traffic to your web site. If you spend enough money in the right place, you will get the exposure you need to get your target market and other potential customers to see you before they see your competition.
PPC ads are also easily adjusted. While other campaigns take weeks or even months to reach a new audience, PPC can be changed for a new market in a matter of hours. This gives you the power to change with dynamic market conditions.
PPC ads can also be a bargain if you find the right keyword. Some are available for as little as a bid of $0.10, allowing you to generate traffic to your site for a fraction of the price of any other advertising option.
The Role of PPC Today
The majority of businesses today cannot use only PPC advertising because of what can be high costs. But does not mean it cannot play a central role.
Campaign and issue-based traffic
Say you have a new product and want to get the word out. This is a campaign that you envision as being short term in nature. PPC is an excellent way to generate some activity and get notice quick. Campaigns can be started in as little as a few hours or days, and you can easily change the text of the ad anytime you like.
Direct Response Businesses
If you are selling a product that the public at large can buy the moment they hit your web site landing page, then PPC is one handy tool. Online stores are a great place for them since you know the people there are already interested in spending money.
Niche Terms
PPC can be a bargain in some instances, if you are looking to get traffic driven for a specific keyword or phrase. For example, if you do not want to spend money for the word tricycle, but do not mind spending just a little for the keyword Main Street Tricycles, chances are, it is a lot less expensive.
Why PPC Always Works And Will Be Around For The Long Run
If you are looking to add traffic to your web site, why would you choose PPC? It is a great all-by-itself internet campaign, or it can be a perfect compliment to an overall internet campaign strategy. If you lack the expertise you need to get a high Google ranking with search engine optimization, you can always get immediate traffic with non-bid based PPC, and a lower cost in most cases than bidding for a keyword phrase on Google, or one of the other search engines. When combined with another low-cost advertising campaign on social media, you can see even more traffic come your way.
The Benefits of PPC
As has been noted before, the best thing PPC brings to the table is speed, and lots of it. If you put up an ad today, you can get traffic – today! PPC is one of the best ways to promote a daily sale on your web site, or to get immediate attention for a new product release.
Targeting is another great benefit to PPC. You can target certain people, in specific places, who have specific interests easily with PPC. You can also save money by effectively excluding those who are not part of your target market.
Depending in part on the medium you use to get your message across, you can target demographics including gender, language, geography, race, times, and much, much more.
If you design your ads in the right way, and can follow it up with a well-designed web page, and an effective sales pitch, you can get results fast with a PPC campaign. For these reasons and a lot more, PPC ads are going to around for a long, long time, as getting traffic to a web site fast is something that will never go out of style.
So Just Where Is PPC Going In the Next 100 years?
Because of the many benefits of PPC, it is obvious it is not going anywhere, anytime soon. The question posed now should be what will it be like in the years to come? To answer that question, one needs to question where technology is going, and what kind of computers we will have in the future. Are laptops and desktops soon to be a thing of the past? Will tablets and smartphones continue to grow in use as they are now?
It is fairly easy to think that touchscreen technology is going to continue to evolve and develop into the foreseeable future.
There are some schools of thought that predict computers as a whole will fall by the wayside in 20 to 50 years. Computers could actually become one with the human body, a sort of biotech that has been seen in science fiction movies, but it may not be that far from reality.
New technology will continue to be developed at a rapid rate, and this also will have some kind of impact on PPC.
With all of this in mind, one can see a future with PPC ads that are more interactive and personalized that ever before. It is also very likely these PPC ads will keep better statistics, and be a better gauge of how effective a marketing campaign truly is. It will be possible to get real time data on, most likely on your smartphone, or tablet, on how many sales and conversions were a direct result of your PPC ad.
Improved metrics and analytics are definitely in the future of PPC ads, as you can look for them to even calculate your return on investment so you can better plan your next PPC ad campaign. Another aspect that can be seen in the future is the ability of a layman to develop state of the art PPC ads without the help of any information technology professional.
It is foreseeable that interactive PPC ads can be generated in a matter of minutes without any specialized knowledge needed. With computing speeds and capability growing at the rate currently seen, PPC ads will become increasingly more sophisticated.
Of course, this is all conjecture based on what has been seen in just the last 20 years. 20 years ago who could have seen the developments we are seeing today? How many people really saw smartphones back then? Who could have seen that connected internet networks could basically serve as a replacement for the mainframe computers that ruled from the 1940s up until the 1990s? Who foresaw being able to do all your banking without ever having to actually set foot in the interior brick and mortar structure of your bank?
Very few people saw these groundbreaking developments in the 1990s. So, with everything that has happened in the last 20 years, it is difficult to see what will happen in the next 20 years, much less the next 100. But there is one thing that is almost certain. More and more businesses will be selling goods and service over the internet. There is no logical reason to think this will not be the case.
With an increasing number of businesses on the internet, all of them trying to drive traffic and revenue to more web sites, businesses will still be looking for the best ways to get that all important traffic. Will Google still be the 800 pound gorilla in the room that it is today? What will a search engine look and function like in the future?
PPC ads will certainly be around in the decades to come. There will certainly be some change, as technology changes, but PPC is here to stay for the long run. In the next 20 years, or the next 100 years, you can be sure sure they will be here in some shape, form, and with increasing functionality. Only time will tell for sure as the internet continues to grow and evolve.
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