Saturday, January 16, 2010

Some Advantages and Disadvantages of the Google AdWords Program

Google AdWords is a very cost effective and popular advertising technique provided by Google through which advertisers are able to display their products on the website and its allied sites. The tool is very popular namely because it can reach a wide number of people owing to Google's popularity.

It is also able to control the ad budget of the publishers because they pay only when some user clicks on their ads. Therefore you pay for only what you get. The ads can be created very easily and also edited at their convenience. Google AdWords is very efficient. It takes only a few minutes for the ad to appear on the screen after you have created it.

Advantages

The control of the ad completely rests on the advertiser. The pricing is based on the CPC method which means "Cost per Click". You pay only when you receive clicks. In fact, you also get to decide how much you pay. If you prefer targeting individual sites, then you can opt for Cost per Impression pricing where you pay by impression.

You can set your daily budget. This begins from 1 cent USD. You create and you manage targeted ads. You can also run the ads on the hours and days you choose. Your account will contain a list of the performance of your ads and you can edit your ads based on that.

Sites that provide advertising network are present. This increases your ad exposure thereby helping you to make better ads. Either a single or multiple ads are targeted through single or more key phrases.

There is a Help Center that assists in the maintenance of your account. Since the success and revenue of the AdWords scheme rests on the success of the advertiser therefore Google helps them by providing cost estimations and control pricing methods. AdWords is also updated continuously and all those new modifications shared with the advertiser on his account.

Disadvantages

The first disadvantage of the Google AdWords program is that it is not very helpful to budding businessmen. This means that if you are new to the business, it might take a while for you to learn the tricks of the trade. You might actually end up spending more than your income.

For instance, if your budget rests at $100.00 with $2 for every click, then very easily you might receive around 50 clicks. But this does not necessarily mean sales. In this case, it might be useful to spread the campaign over a period of at least a week. This would bring in more data and you can take a more informed stance at the end of two weeks.

Ads are generally displayed on the right side of the screen. But most people only look at the left side of the screen where the organic listings are displayed. Therefore it might not always be helpful to use Google AdWords. But once your AdWords campaign begins to work out, you might even be featured along with the organic listings on the first page. This definitely helps.