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Online Advertising

By Bobby Buys

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 05May2010
Word count: 497
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We can have long, heated debates about advantages and disadvantages of traditional vs. online advertising. Someone trying to sell you a magazine advert may, for example, point out (correctly, mind you), that internet does have a wider reach, but that magazine readers are more likely to notice and to read your ad, because internet surfers are notorious for (a) not seeing large sections of their computer screen and (b) not reading what they do see.

But there is at least one area in which off-line advertising cannot match its online counterpart. Online, you can measure measure the effects of your campaign. No more need to worry which half of the money spent on advertising is wasted. With all the sophisticated tools at their disposal, online advertisers are no longer clueless: they know exactly what they are getting for their money.

The preferred model of many online advertisers is CPA (cost per action) or PPA (pay per action). In this model, the advertiser pays only for the users who click on their ad and perform a desired action, which can range from subscribing to a newsletter to buying a product.

This model is as a rule preferred by advertisers. Online ad publishers, however, as a rule shun from the rigours of CPA or PPA and prefer to receive a nice amount for simply displaying someone's ads.

The online advertising model based on showing ads - either images or text - to internet users is known by the abbreviation CPM (cost per thousand impressions) or PPM (pay per thousand impressions). This model is especially favoured by high-traffic sites like online media. In this scenario, the advertiser agrees to pay a certain amount for a certain number of impressions on a monthly basis, regardless of whether internet users click the ad or even notice it. Publishers usually require a long term commitment, typically from three to twelve months.

This form of advertising can work well for branding purposes and can be put on par with advertising in traditional media like press, radio and TV.

The CPC (cost per click) or PPC (pay per click) online advertising model seems to be the middle ground where both the advertisers and the publishers can be reasonably happy. In brief, in the CPC model the publisher charges the advertiser only when an internet user clicks on an ad.

The advantage of CPC models lies in their (relatively) low cost. On top of that, the most popular CPC models are very flexible and put the advertiser in control of the ads and of the advertising budget.

Many sites offer this flexible brand of CPC advertising. However, this model is usually linked with search engine marketing, notably Google AdWords and Yahoo and Microsoft search marketing.

As you may have guessed, due to overwhelming popularity of Google search engine in South Africa, most local online advertisers have tied their fortunes with Google AdWords, though things may change now that Microsoft and Yahoo are uniting their search forces.

bidorbuy.co.za is South Africa's largest online marketplace. Buyers and sellers come to bidorbuy to buy and sell virtually anything in auction format or at fixed prices. Contact details: bidorbuy Marketing Department; email promotion@bidorbuy.co.za, web site www.bidorbuy.co.za

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