This wiki is managed by Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights to help keep marketers up-to-date with developments in digital marketing
Paid Search Marketing definition
From Marketing Online
Paid search marketing or Pay per click (PPC) is similar to conventional advertising; here a relevant text ad with a link to a company page is displayed when the user of a search engine types in a specific phrase.
The series of familiar text ads usually labelled as ‘sponsored links’ are displayed as is shown above, or to the right of the natural listings as shown.
Although many searchers prefer to click on the natural listings, a sufficient number do click on the paid listings (typically around a quarter or a third of all clicks) such that they are highly profitable for companies such as Google and a well designed paid search campaign can drive a significant amount of business for the search companies.
Each of the main search engines has it’s own advertising programmes
Google's content network of third party sites
Many marketers new to paid search don't realise that Google also offers CPM (Placement targeting) options on its content network where contextual ads are displayed on third-party publisher sites relevant to the content on a page.
The content network is significant since it enables advertisers to reach their audiences on other sites like this one which offer the Google AdSense programme. It is switched on by default and needs careful management since lead quality can be lower.
Google achieves around a third of it's revenue from this and it was as high as 50% at one time.
