PPC Advertising: Fad or Fab?
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is certainly nothing new, so I won’t be deciding its fad or fab status based on it being a new tactic, and whether or not it will stick around for a while. Instead, the question of PPC’s validity comes with the increasing interest in other options, such as pay-per-action (PPA) ads. So is pay-per-click marketing going to be around for the long haul, or have click fraud and the recent PPA interest signaled the impending demise of the PPC market?
How it Works
PPC is simple. It’s exactly what it says… pay… per… click. Advertisers place a banner ad, text ad, video ad, or pretty much any kind of ad that they want on a publisher’s website, blog, tool, etc. Rather than paying for a certain number of views or impressions, the advertiser only pays when a site visitor clicks on an advertisement, visiting their website.
Fad or Fab?
FAB – Here’s why – Even though the PPC ad model can be more easily manipulated than others, I had to rate it as a fab marketing tactic, in that I don’t expect it to go the way of the dinosaurs in the foreseeable future. Click fraud will continue to exist, and new ad models like pay-per-action will probably be a sensible move for a lot of businesses. But not all advertisers can come up with a pay-per-action scheme that would work for their needs (such as those trying to drive traffic to a content-based site, where there’s nothing for visitors to actually do – if completely non-interactive sites still exist that is).
I also look at it this way… there have already been other options (like CPM and affiliate ads – basically PPA), but people still flock to PPC marketing. It’s easy, and depending on the advertiser’s niche or industry, it can make for some pretty cheap advertising. If all they want is eyes on their page, it will probably still suffice. Those who trust in their marketing copy would logically prefer to pay much less for a click, and let their copy convince people to buy, sign up, etc. as opposed to paying more per action. Of course, that would depend on what kind of conversions they’re getting to begin with. If conversions are low, PPA would probably be a move to consider. Then again, given the nature of webmasters (publishers) they’ll find a way to manipulate PPA systems as much as any other soon enough (if they haven’t already), putting things on a level playing field in the end.
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