Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Facebook Ads – A Comparison

Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Facebook Ads – A Comparison

Hello there now there’s several ways to promote your online business and one of them is to use ad networks, just so that everyone understands the opportunities offered through ad networks I’m going to cover the 3 identified above and give you some pointers.

Ad networks let you put your ads where people will see them. When they click on the ad to check it out, you pay. This is called PPC (Pay Per Click) and it’s a great way to get traffic to your site fast.

Lots of people use it as part of their strategy. There are lots of free ways to generate traffic online, but if you’ve just gotten started with your site, you may want to pay for a short burst of it using one of these ad networks. Then again, some folks work their ads into their overall marketing strategy along with free methods.

AdWords – Google’s PPC Network

Google AdWords is without a doubt the biggest ad network. After all, it’s Google we’re talking about here. When your ads are place on Google’s search results page, there’s no doubt that you will get clicks. It’s considered the best ad network around today.

One of the other advantages of Google AdWords is that it’s integrated with everything else Google. They offer all kinds of extra tools like their keyword suggestion tool and built-in ROI tracker to help you make your ads more efficient.

AdWords may be the Web’s number one ad network, but it’s not perfect. One of the downsides is that unlike other networks, you can’t see your competitors’ bids. Sometimes this is helpful in setting your price.

Yahoo Search Marketing

Google’s number one, but Yahoo shouldn’t be ignored. You should include them too if you’re going to get serious about PPC. An added bonus is that Yahoo places your ads not only on their search engine results pages but also on their high-quality information sites like CNN, ESPN and Yahoo News where more people will see them.

You can now also place your ads on Yahoo’s Local Advertising network. Until recently, ad networks just worked nationally, but now you can target a specific local area for your ads to reach.

There are a couple of things I really don’t like about Yahoo Search Marketing. For one thing, it takes you longer to get through the approval process. But what really stinks is that if you target multiple countries, languages or regions, you have to create a whole new account for each. This means maintaining a bunch of accounts, which is a pain.

Facebook Ads

The whole Web seems to be going social and Facebook has become Google’s main competitor. They now offer Facebook ads and if you haven’t taken advantage of this ad network, I recommend it. It works the same way but ads show up on people’s Facebook profiles.

The really cool thing about Facebook Ads is that they let you target an exact demographic perfectly. You can use anything at all in their profile as a keyword or parameter for your ads. This includes age, location and all the regular stuff, but also hobbies and interests, political views, and absolutely anything they put in their profile information.

You can also put pictures on your ads, which is really powerful. You can’t do that with other ad networks.

Which ad network is the best? I’d recommend using all three. While Google gets the most traffic, you’re really missing out if you only use it. Try all three and then track your results. You can always drop one if it underperforms, but I’m willing to be you won’t need to.

The key here is to test, and test again and again – find what works for you