If you’re interested in online advertising, you can either handle your own marketing, by taking advantage of organic search engine optimization or pay out of pocket for advertising, using cost-per-mille or cost-per-click advertising methods. There are pros and cons for each type of advertising, and many individuals use a mix of them to get the benefits of each.
Organic SEO
Using search engine optimization is considered an organic form of advertising because you don’t have to pay for it, at least not in a direct and out of pocket sense. SEO requires that you set up your website in such a way that it ends up at the top of search engine results. The advantage of organic SEO is that you can spend your time and effort instead of money to bring visitors to your website. However, search engine rankings are not guaranteed, and it may take a while for your website to reach a high enough rank to really bring in traffic.
Cost-Per-Mille (CPM)
CPM is the way that organizations were charged for almost all advertising when Internet marketing first started. When an advertiser’s ad shows up on a website, it counts as an impression, and advertisers are billed a certain amount per 1,000 impressions. It does not matter whether someone interacts with an ad or not; if it can be seen, it counts as an impression. This tends to be a fairly inexpensive way of marketing, but CPM usually produces results that are less impressive than other paid online advertising methods.
Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
This type of marketing is when you pay a certain amount each time someone clicks on your advertisement. Advertisements are normally shown as banners on websites, but many social media sites also use CPC to charge organizations when someone interacts with a promoted post. Google AdWords also uses it as a way of charging businesses for every time someone clicks on promoted search engine results. How much you pay per click may be set at a flat rate, but many systems now adjust the cost based on how many other advertisers are vying for space. Prices for ad clicks may also vary widely depending on how many other advertisers are attempting to show ads to those viewing certain search results or targeted audiences.
In our next article, we’ll discuss how Google AdWords works and how the system determines how much you pay when someone clicks on your ad.