Which PPC Is Better: Google's Content Or Search?

When you advertise using their adwords pay per click program Google offers the advertiser two broad options. The options are to either advertise in search results or to advertise in website content.

Most advertisers with Google choose both options. If you choose Advertising in search, then this means that results are displayed in Google under searches, and in its distributors search results as well.

Google content on the other hand means applies means advertising on those websites who choose to display Adsense ads on their websites. As adsense rapidly expands, it is now viewable on millions of web pages all over the internet. Despite the popularity of Adsense and content many advertisers still stick with advertising in search results.

There are several reasons this happens, and the first reason relates to trust, and can be traced to the issue of click fraud committed by smaller websites as well as adsense empires.

Although this issue is also happens in search it is far less prevalent. Those who commit Click Fraud on search usually do so in order to weaken a competitor’s ROI. The same motivation can be said to be at play in adsense, where the site owner attempts to increase his revenues using similar tactics.

Another reason why website owners choose content to advertise with is the motivation of the buyer when he is on a website. Someone who is on a different website, other than the advertisers may be there for totally different reasons. For example, a website that discusses the disadvantages of Adsense, would actually display ads for those selling “Adsense Websites” for example. People may click on it, but they are unlikely to buy after reading a negative review.

The other reason could be that the person on the adsense website may have been looking for what is the best color palette to use. The person therefore would not find the advert relevant, but might click on it in a flippant way.

Adsense websites may also often be rejected by the advertiser because they feel it involves more work. This may entail browsing through websites to see how relevant they are, and editing their bids to ensure they still appear on a page.

With some words having a network of over 500 websites, it no doubt becomes a tedious and expensive task. Although this may be the case, many also find that their Adwords account displays websites, that don’t even appear to be trying to support their keywords. The example that comes to mind, are those advertising under legal phrases that appear on adsense websites “terms and conditions” and “privacy policy” pages.

Even though many advertisers shun content advertising, there are those who feel it provides a similar ROI to search. A reason for this can be found in the fact that more and more advertisers are only choosing search. As this happens the advertiser has less competition causing the price per click to reduce.

Advertisers are also finding a good ROI from publisher websites that decide to actively promote the advertiser’s services within their content. An example of this can be found when someone discusses printing services, and actually directly recommends the advertiser’s services. This turns out to be a good move for both the publisher and the advertiser, and a good way for publishers to go forward.

However in spite of this, publishers should still remember, to not be too obvious in doing this, or savvy buyers may figure out the publisher’s intention.

There is one more reason why advertisers may opt for content, and that is to increase their scale, however this can also be done across other search engines. The fact however still remains that those who choose content advertising choose the Google Adsense network. It is better regulated than it’s competitors such as yahoo’s and others, and it’s superior network of publishers mean the advertisers will benefit from being able to spread their message through many different kinds of websites.

In spite of Adsense being the best Pay Per Click content distributor, it certainly doesn’t compare to search for the advertiser. On search the leads are more qualified, more regulated, and tend to be less fraudulent. This has seen advertisers consistently choose search over content. However the advertiser’s should always test adsense and see if it offers the ROI they are looking for. Some advertisers say that content provides a better return for their business than search. This varies, however and generally search remains King for PPC advertisers.