While Google AdWords is the top pay-per-click marketing resource out there at the moment, did you know that AdWords only captures about 50% of the market? Yes, that means if you are only using AdWords, you are leaving out 50% of potential customers and traffic!

The next biggest pay-per-click search engine at the moment is Yahoo’s Search Marketing program. In some ways, it is different from Google’s program but it can be also massively profitable for you if you work it right.

Yahoo captures about 30% of the market share so that’s a good deal of traffic to leverage on. And combine that with this factor: most advertisers who advertise on AdWords completely ignore Yahoo Search Marketing altogether. Which means there is lesser competition and you can get more clicks for cheaper costs and hence more traffic and more bang for your buck!

Bidding on keywords on Yahoo is far more simpler than AdWords. Positions of ads are determined by the amount you bid. And you can also see what your competitors are bidding! Of course, this means you might end up in a price war. But fret not, it has been proven that it is actually to avoid the number one spot and be on 3rd or 4th placing because you’ll rack up less clicks from ‘impulsive’ clickers. Internet surfers who scroll down the ads to see all of them are usually much more targeted and responsive.

On Yahoo, it is also very easy to customize your ads for each keyword, so that makes them super targeted, getting you more traffic and more sales.

Throughout this article I will compare and contrast the three giants Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and the freshly launched Microsoft adCenter in order to shed some light on the unique aspects and features of each platform. I will cover three main areas of each platform consisting of ad distribution, demographics and tools. When you have completed reading this article you will possess the knowledge required in order to make an informed decision on which of these marketing platforms is the most beneficial for your company to launch a successful PPC campaign.

Google AdWords

Google Adwords is currently the most popular of the three advertising platforms. They continue to develop new tools and features that secure their footing upon the top of the PPC Marketing podium.
Ad Distribution:

The Google Network consists of thousands of web properties including search sites, content pages, email services (Gmail), newsletters and discussion boards. According to Media Metrics Data 80% of internet users in the United States will view an AdWords ad within the next month. You may choose to show your ads on the search network the content network or perhaps both depending on your custom needs. A few of the search sites that your ads will appear on when utilizing the search network are Google network consist of Google, AOL, Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves), Amazon and Shopping.com. Several examples of where your ads will appear when advertising on the content network are HowStuffWorks, New York Times, Washington Post and Forbes.

Demographics:

The Google AdWords system allows you to target users in several different ways. You are able to target users by specific locations or by specific languages. This is achieved by determining a users IP address, search query location, internet domain or the users set language preference.

Tools:

Google AdWords comes equipped with a robust toolbox that can streamline your PPC campaign management.

The site exclusion tool allows you to block your ads from appearing on any sites that you feel may be irrelevant or inappropriate for your advertisement. The keyword tool grants you the ability to help you improve your keyword lists, estimate your individual keyword traffic or find new negative keywords. You may add your new keywords directly to your selected adgroup or download them to your computer.

You can best utilize the traffic estimator by utilizing it to estimate your position based on your max Cost-Per-Click (CPC), your daily spend, impressions and clicks as well as your keyword status. The My Chang History allows you to view any changes that have been made to your account within a particular time period.

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) is the pioneer of PPC advertising and a global leader in commercial search services.

Ad Distribution:

The Yahoo Publishers Network is a collaboration of web properties consisting of search web sites, content publishers, email clients and more. Much the same as AdWords you may choose if you would like to show your ads on search or content sites. Several of the search sites that make up the Yahoo! Publishers Network are Yahoo!, Excite, iVillage and Sympatico. A few of the content sites include Advertising.com, CNN, ESPN and National Geographic.

Demographics:

The Yahoo! Search Marketing platform in my opinion trails the pack when talking about audience targeting demographics. The option available to you are very basic, however Yahoo! makes up for it with their Local Sponsored Search options.

Local Sponsored Search allows users who have a brick and mortar location to participate in gaining business from internet users who prefer to research online but purchase locally. Local Sponsored Search allows you to target visitors by a specific territory or service area up to a 100 mile radius.

Tools:

Conversion Counter is Yahoo! Search Marketing’s tool to help you measure the conversions of your advertising campaigns. Simply install a small segment of code onto the conversion page of your web site. Yahoo! breaks the stats down into information that is truly useful for your online marketing success.

Easy Track helps you in distinguishing web site and search engine traffic that result directly from your Yahoo! PPC Campaign.

Search Optimizer automates bidding strategies based on your keyword performance history. Yes, this tool does have it’s time and place but is still no substitute for manual optimization of your PPC campaign.

Microsoft adCenter

Microsoft adCenter is the newest competitor to the PPC advertising arena. Although there are still a few glitches that need to be ironed out adCenter has the potential to be a real competitor.

Ad Distribution:

Unlike the previous two PPC platforms we have gone over Microsoft adCenter only facilitates advertising throughout the MSN Search Engine. There is still potential that your ad will be viewed by a large audience, 40 million people per month to be precise. Out of the 40 million people who utilize MSN search 93% shopped and 81% of them made online purchases in the US. I feel that it is safe to say that we may also expect adCenter’s ad distribution network to expand over the next several months.

Demographics:

With the Microsoft adCenter you are able to find out who the searchers are, identify their geographic location as well as time of day information. adCenter takes the time of day information to the next level with targeting of ads by day of week as well as a precise time of day. The adCenter platform is the first of the PPC search engines that gives you the ability to target a select age group and even the gender of the searcher can be determined. The age and gender targeting feature could come in very handy depending on your product or services. MSN is able to provide such precise targeting demographics by pulling their information on individuals from Microsoft Passport accounts. What that means is anyone out there who has either a Hotmail account or a MSN Messenger account is easily trackable.

Tools:

adTracker is a mechanism used by Microsoft adCenter to track all clicks from ads served throughout MSN Search. adTracker measures the effectiveness of an ad by tracking which clicks result in a web site visit.

Bid Boost is a very interesting tool that is exclusive to Microsoft adCenter advertisers. The Bid Boost tool raises the value of a bid by a preset percentage after it recognizes that the individual is from your optimal user demographic.

In conclusion as you have read through this article you can see that there are pros and cons that come along with each one of these PPC advertising platforms discussed. The goal of this article was to arm you with a few facts that lend a hand in helping you to deciding on which PPC advertising platform is the most beneficial for you to launch a winning advertising campaign that produces highly qualified relevant traffic at an optimal return on investment.

In this article I will lay out some of the features of each one, and hopefully this will help you determine which suits your business best.

Using the Yahoo Search Marketing program, the first thing you’ll notice is that you must pay an upfront fee to cover the cost of your initial advertising expenses. This sometimes scares a lot of new or novice Internet marketers, because without having even received any clicks, they have to fork out some money.

If you do manage to sign up and get over the initial fear, you will notice that the Yahoo Search Marketing program is a bit difficult to use. Play around with the tool and familiarize yourself. It is no doubt that after you compare the conversion and/or the search results from Yahoo with that of Google AdWords, you will quickly opt for the latter.

With Google AdWords, there is no initial upfront cost other than the verification of a small refundable deposit to your bank account to ensure that you are a legitimate Internet marketer. The Google AdWords platform is simple to use. By typing in your desired search terms and bidding on your cost per click, and setting your daily maximum ad campaign limits, it’s all here. And one of the best things about Google AdWords is that it is located on the largest search engines in the world. You will quickly notice that although conversion rates may be low at first (you may need to work more on selling your product on your squeeze page), however much traffic can be routed to your website if you have a slightly higher budget to start with.

So which is better, Google or Yahoo? If you’re still confused, just give both a try. I’m sure you’ll agree that Google is the way to go if you are looking for quicker success.

Running an online business is a great way to make money and spend your time doing something you love. Advertising, of course, is crucial to a successful business, online or off. As an online business owner, when you use Yahoo Search Marketing, your advertising dollars will work far more effectively and bring you more visitors who become paying customers.

Traditional advertising, such as newspaper or radio advertising, or banner advertising on web sites, is impression-based. This means you pay for the number of “impressions” – the number of times your ad is displayed, in a banner ad, or the number of readers or listeners, with traditional advertising. Because Yahoo Search Marketing is not traditional marketing, it follows a very different payment structure.

The problem with traditional, impression-based advertising is you have to pay for the advertising whether anyone actually visits your site or not. As you can imagine, you can spend a lot of money on this type of advertising, and have no results to show for it. With Yahoo Search Marketing, you pay for results.

Yahoo Search Marketing is based on the pay-per-click model. This means that you place your ad on Yahoo, and only pay for the ad viewers who click through to your site. Even better, with Yahoo Search Marketing, you choose what you will pay for each click.

When you use Yahoo Search Marketing, you will choose the keywords you want to advertise on, and place a maximum bid, your maximum cost per click, on each keyword. This puts you in absolute control of your advertising, insuring that you only pay for visits to your web site from keyword-targeted ads.

The best thing about Yahoo Search Marketing is the sheer numbers of people who search on Yahoo. With an average of 2.3 billion (with a b) searches every month, Yahoo Search Marketing gives you an incredible reach in your advertising. Your advertising will be in front of people who are actively searching for your product, and you’ll pay only for clicks from interested customers.

With traditional advertising, you will have to pay whether or not you get any traffic, and you have no way of knowing if the people who visit your site are really interested, or what got their attention and directed them to your site. With Yahoo Search Marketing’s targeted pay-per-click model, you pay only for actual visitors to your site, and you can closely monitor what ads are bringing visitors.

What could be better than knowing you can reach exactly the customers you want, any time you want, by targeting exactly the keywords that fit your business and advertising to a potential 2.3 billion web site visitors? Yahoo Search Marketing puts your advertising on steroids by allowing you to reach huge numbers of people, pay only for results, and fine-tune your advertising whenever you need.

You’re running your business online because you know online marketing is effective. You want advertising just as effective as your business model. Yahoo Search Marketing delivers that kind of marketing, with the audience and the flexibility to make your marketing successful.

Yahoo Search Marketing is pay-per-click advertising. If you’re not familiar with this type of online advertising, these are ads that appear on search pages when someone searches for the keywords you’ve chosen. You choose how much you will pay when someone clicks on your ad for each particular keyword phrase, and you only pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your site.

Targeting local visitors is easy with Yahoo Search Marketing. You simply choose the geographic area you wish to target, and Yahoo’s intelligent interface will send your ads only to people in your area. This means that you reach only people who are searching for your type of business, in your local area. The clicks you receive with this type of marketing will be from people who are looking for you and just don’t know it yet.

With traditional advertising, you take a shotgun approach, scattering your ad to the winds and hoping that someone who is interested in your offerings will see it at the right time. With Yahoo Search Marketing you focus with a laser-like precision on only those people who are good prospects for your business-and you only pay if they actually visit your site.

Advertising costs can eat you alive if your advertising is not hitting the mark. With traditional advertising, it is very difficult, not to mention expensive to get in front of the right people at the right time, but with Yahoo Search Marketing, this is both easy and affordable.

Because you choose the keyword phrases to advertise on, and the maximum amount you will pay for each click, you control your budget and know exactly how much you’ll spend on Yahoo Search Marketing. And again, because you’re advertising to people who are already looking for what you offer, your results will be far superior to traditional advertising.

The Internet has changed the way people buy, and Yahoo Search Marketing lets you reach people where and when they’re ready to buy. You no longer have to send out a “shotgun” ad through traditional media and hope the right people see your ad and come to your Yahoo Store. Now you can put your web site where people are looking-on the search results pages of Yahoo.

When you begin advertising on Yahoo Search Marketing, you may want to test different ads to see which one brings more clicks, and sales, and to make different offers to different customers. You can test your ads and run different ad groups for different keywords with Yahoo Search Marketing, quickly and easily.

Advertising has never been simpler, more affordable, or more effective. With Yahoo Search Marketing, reaching the right people at the right time is a matter of choosing your keywords and your budget, and pulling in customers like a magnet.