Advertising has certainly come a long way over the years and nowhere is that more evident than in digital marketing. Advertising tools continue to become more complex and intuitive, allowing your advertisements to be both more effective and less expensive at the same time. One of the big recent shifts is in the migration of many marketers away from paid advertising and towards display advertising. Many marketers are finding that keyword-based display advertising is helping improve their overall ROI and keep costs under control.

Keyword Targeting Versus Pay-Per-Click

Display advertising adds another level of finesse to the ads by utilizing advanced search techniques that scan your website to deliver ads that are relevant to the keywords on your site for a particular campaign. This matching process is what helps searchers find the most relevant information on your website quickly. This is one of the reasons why keyword targeting continues to outshine PPC for many advertisers.

PPC or paid advertising occurs when an individual clicks an ad from a search result. Advertisers pay for the click, but the campaigns are based on pre-set keywords based on a complicated bidding algorithm. This process requires the marketer to pre-define keyword phrases that they feel will be relevant for their target market.

Pros and Cons

Depending on your advertising goals, either PPC or display advertising (or both!) may be a good fit for your organization. Here are some of the key pros and cons of each.

Keyword Targeting

• Crawls specific pages and determines keywords based on the content on the page in order to display ads
• You are not necessarily competing against national brands, helping keep CPC under control
• Text ads are not listed on a search results page next to your competitors
• Cost of keyword-targeted advertising is dramatically lower than PPC
• More sophisticated results than with PPC

Pay-Per-Click

• PPC advertising is very simple and basic -- you will either hit with keywords or miss completely
• People are often skeptical of these ads or ignore them altogether
• Research shows that 90% of traffic clicks fall below the PPC section of the search results page

Target Customer Behavior

With keyword targeting, you are able to automatically tailor advertising to the reader and to the content that you're promoting. The majority of consumers are in research mode when they are searching the web. This means that they haven't yet made a decision, and are simply looking for more information. PPC advertising is ideal when you're attempting to entice a customer to make an immediate purchase based on a pre-set list of keywords that indicate purchasing inclination. However, keyword targeting is more helpful for individuals who have yet to make up their mind about their precise purchase.

Not surprisingly, paid search ads are falling while the more top of funnel advertising such as keyword ads are growing dramatically. As advertisers see that keyword targeting is increasingly effective at reaching consumers at the early stages of their buying journey, that shift is likely to continue. Learn more about the advertising opportunities for your business with Zimmer Radio. Give our digital advertising professionals a call at 417-624-1025 today to get the word out about your business!