Summary: Sometimes ads simply go too far, and they cause the opposite reaction of what they’re intended to do. Here’s an example of poor advertising from Verizon that I was exposed to at the theater recently.

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I’ve always been a harsh judge of advertising. Perhaps it’s because I work in PR, and know there are often better ways to get a message and / or image across. I don’t know. What I do know is that, from a consumer perspective, some advertisements just go too far.

I’m not even talking about overtly sexual ads, or the simply ridiculous ones. Today it’s advertisements that are overly drawn out that top my list of annoyances.

I went to the theater a few days ago to see a film. Before the films, it’s common to have advertisements shown before previews. It’s bad enough to be subjected to so many of them when you’re paying as much as tickets are going for these days, but Verizon’s ads made the pre-show period absolutely unbearable this time.

There was what must have been (or at least felt like) a freaking five-minute advertisement just to hype up a specific feature available through them. It was something that could have had a nice “wow factor” in a 30-second spot. But no… the damned thing just wouldn’t end.

To make matters worse, as soon as I was letting out a sigh of relief that it was finally over, another (equally long and obnoxious) ad from Verizon started playing! I could have screamed.

Verizon simply overdid it. The ads were so long that they became an annoyance (and these didn’t seem like ads that were designed to be annoying for the sake of getting you to remember them – and if they were, they didn’t work, because I couldn’t tell you much about them now other than how much I despised them). They also purchased too much ad time for the audience they were targeting there. It was nuts.

So what would the smarter move have been? Have a short, clever ad that we would have remembered (because the feature they were pushing actually did look like it could have been cool). Instead, they not only made me forget the ads, but they made me absolutely swear to myself that I’d never ever ever buy anything from Verizon – why would I want to pay for overpriced features and gadgets from a company that’s going to simply squander the money on pathetic advertisements? No thanks. Now isn’t that the reverse of what an advertisement is supposed to make you think? (And for the record, I wasn’t the only person there who seemed quite visibly annoyed.)

Summary: Learn from these common PPC advertising campaign mistakes small business owners make, and increase your profitability with higher-converting ads.

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SiteProNews has an excellent post I’d like to share with you today: Small Business PPC – 26 Mistakes That Cost You MoneyWhat is PPC?PPC is pay-per-click, a type of advertising through programs like Google’s Adwords. Essentially, you bid on keyword phrases, and pay Google for each time someone clicks on your ads (which may appear in their content network – on sites like this one which features Adsense ads above each post on single post pages, or which may appear in Google’s search results).

The idea is that your ad is displayed to targeted viewers (based on a site’s content or the visitor’s search habits), so they’re likely to click the ad and have a genuine interest in what you’re offering.

The problem is that many small business owners don’t know how to run an effective PPC campaign by weeding out low-converting ad spots, choosing the best phrases to target, or knowing how much to bid on their keywords to get the best value for their money.

I’m certainly no PPC expert myself, so I’ll leave it to the folks at SiteProNews to give you some solid tips on what to do (or not to do) when you run a pay-per-click ad campaign for your small or online business.

Read the article.