If you've been watching the American series about the birth of modern advertising, Mad Men, you might be familiar with some of the ways that companies try to get us to buy their products or services. Marketing and advertising has been around as long as people have been trying to sell us things. It's no different today than it was fifty or a hundred years ago. However the world has moved on and it's no longer enough to stick up a poster or put an ad in the local paper to successfully advertise your product and maximise its coverage. The internet has had a huge impact on marketing and advertising. When it first cam along in the form we know today many people predicted the death of advertising and said it was a bad thing for designers and creative agencies in the advertising business. As with all sweeping predictions like this though, they were very far off the mark. The internet has just pointed things in a different direction while at the same time breathing new life into the advertising industry and opening new doors. As a result new opportunities have come up for people in the marketing industry. Banner ads, email subscription lists and even whole mini websites have become the norm for companies wishing to advertise online and each has repercussions in the real world as well. Far from killing off the need to advertise, the internet has revived it and increased the need to advertise. Pay Per Click (PPC) is one such area that has become a staple of the internet and the advertising industry. It has several attractive things about it including the fact that the cost is determined on how successful it is. An advertiser is only ever charged when someone actually uses PPC to look at a certain product or service. It's a bit like having to pay something every time a person visits a shop on the strength of an advert on TV. The charges are small but the more people who use a PPC link the more money changes hands. PPC works by placing an attractive and informative graphic on a web page and making that graphic a link to a website. In this respect it can be said to be very traditional in its basic premise. Advertising has always been about attractive design aimed at getting you through the shop door. Artists and designers are still involved in the whole process in the same way that they would have been on advertising campaigns for Cadbury's or Ford over fifty years ago. Where PPC differs from traditional advertising though is in the ability to measure the impact of the graphic or advert and so determine its effectiveness and charge a fee accordingly. Its an extremely fair and transparent way of working on a campaign. These PPC ads can be placed on websites including blogs, search engines and social networking sites. Another very attractive aspect of PPC is that it can be targeted at certain areas. In the same way that TV advertisers will put sportswear ads on at half time in a football match or billboards advertising snacks can be placed at outdoor events where people will want food so to can PPC be placed to achieve maximum impact. The best example of targeted PPC is through search engines. When someone types in a particular word that describes the product or service they require the page they are given can be manipulated to only contain Pay Per Click advertising relevant to that search. In this respect, to advertisers wishing to make the most of their advertising budgets, it is economical and cost effective.
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