The Changing Face Of PPC

04/06/2010

By Rob Weatherhead

[atag465] PPC, or Pay Per Click marketing, is undergoing huge change, without many people realising it.  When I use the phrase PPC I am not necessarily referring to paid search, although this forms part of the pie.

When you speak to a person about PPC, they immediately think of Google.  Some may also venture to add Bing and Yahoo into the conversation, although many will not even consider them.  But there are a number of PPC channels which are growing away from the world of paid search, which are set to change the future of PPC marketing.

Facebook, for example, is now serving more than 50 billion ads a month, the majority of which are paid for on a CPC basis.  My own experiences of Facebook advertising show that it can generate a greater ROI than Google Adwords due to the ability to target individual users by demographics, likes and dislikes.  With such a reach, and the control of CPC bidding much like paid search, its revenues continue to grow and I would suggest its spend will be on track to overtake Bing in the not too distant future.

LinkedIn has adopted a similar model, allowing the targeting of users by role, location, industry sector and other profile information.  Paid search often struggles to work as effectively in B2B markets so this is another channel which is set to grow.

Then there are the other display advertising networks and exchanges such as Google Placement Network, Adconion and Right Media.  As targeting options improve, and with payment only when ads are clicked, these networks are going to start eating into the search engines share.

Microsoft and Yahoo announced in recent weeks that they intend to have completed the merger of their services by 2012, 18 months away at the very least.  In the meantime these other PPC channels are going to continue to gain ground on Yahoo Search Marketing and Bing and they will be left with the scraps.

All these changes mean that in 2-3 years time, a pay per click strategy is going to be greatly different from the 2010 version.  Google’s spend could start to see a challenge from the social networks of Facebook and LinkedIn, and Micro-hoo will be left feeding off the scraps unless they can stir their marketing machine into action. There is also bound to be a number of additional networks or channels that spring up in the meantime offer targeted advertising on a CPC basis.

If you want to steal a march on the competition and future proof your PPC strategy, you need to stop thinking Google, and start thinking about other channels offering targeted advertising on a CPC basis.

Rob Weatherhead is Operations Director for Small to medium sized enterprise PPC specialist Latitude Express and has worked in search engine marketing since 2004. He is responsible for overseeing the delivery of PPC and SEO campaigns for small business in all business sectors.  You can follow more of Rob's thoughts via his digital marketing blog or through the Latitude Group website.