Self Serve Advertising, By Google

Home > Promote > Advertising > Search Engines

by Aaron West

Google recently launched its new do-it-yourself advertising program, Adwords, which allows anyone to create an advertising campaign on the Google Web site within minutes.

The new program is targeted towards small and local business owners, who can't typically afford larger keyword campaigns. It allows people to give a text link and a two line description, which will appear in the right column when a search is performed for specified keywords.

I used our Flash channel to test this service. To get started, I had to first register an account with the program. From there, I followed the steps to create a campaign, specified the maximum amount I wanted to spend, and entered my credit card information. Within 5 minutes, my ad appeared on Google.

Adwords offers full, up to date, reporting. Within minutes my ad had received a hundred impressions. I checked again 5 minutes later and it had accumulated 300 impressions, but no clicks.

The program is definitely affordable for small business owners, and resembles a pay for performance search engine more than a targeted keyword campaign. There is a minimum deposit of $50 to get started, and you decide how much money to spend, and how quickly to spend it. My campaign will likely run out by the end of the day. I can then renew it, create other campaigns, or do nothing if I decide it is getting too expensive.

This is not the first of these types of programs. Direct Hit has a program which is very similar. It is essentially a pay for performance CPM program. Advertisers bid by a CPM rate. Whoever pays the most ends up at the top, and there is only room for three advertisers on one page.

You can see an example here:

Direct Hit Search for Web Hosting

I tried this program when it first launched. I received some traffic from it, but it wasn't as cost effective as I would have liked. I estimated that, based on the CPM I was paying, each click cost me about 50 cents.

The Google program seems much more cost effective than other programs, plus the ads are more visible as a result of Google's text based design. There are no competing banners or buttons.

Google's program appears to be promising at a first glance. As with any advertising campaign, its best to monitor performance and see whether it is a worthy investment, but it definitely seems to be a great alternative to other keyword campaigns.