Pay Per Click Marketing

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Pay-per-click

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked.

Pay-per-click is commonly associated with first-tier search engines (such as Google Ads, Amazon Advertising, and Microsoft Advertising formerly Bing Ads).

With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market and pay when ads (text-based search ads or shopping ads that are a combination of images and text) are clicked.

In contrast, content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.

PPC display advertisements, also known as banner ads, are shown on web sites with related content that have agreed to show ads and are typically not Pay-per-click advertising.

Social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter have also adopted Pay-per-click as one of their advertising models.

The amount advertisers pay depends on the publisher and is usually driven by two major factors: quality of the ad, and the maximum bid the advertiser is willing to pay per click.

The higher the quality of the ad, the lower the cost per click is charged and vice versa.

However, websites can offer PPC ads.

Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a keyword query matches an advertiser's keyword list that has been added in different ad groups, or when a content site displays relevant content.

Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to, above, or beneath organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site.[1] The PPC advertising model is open to abuse through click fraud,[2] although Google and others have implemented automated systems[3] to guard against abusive clicks by competitors or corrupt web developers.[4] Pay-per-click, along with cost per impression (CPM) and cost per order, are used to assess the cost-effectiveness and profitability of the internet marketing.

In Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM), the advertiser only pays for every 1000 impressions of the ad.

Pay-per-click (PPC) has an advantage over cost per impression in that it conveys information about how effective the advertising was.

Clicks are a way to measure attention and interest; if the main purpose of an ad is to generate a click, or more specifically drive traffic to a destination, then Pay-per-click is the preferred metric.

The quality and placement of the advertisement will affect click through rates and the resulting total Pay-per-click cost.

Cost-per-click (CPC) is calculated by dividing the advertising cost by the number of clicks generated by an advertisement.

The basic formula is: There are two primary models for determining Pay-per-click: flat-rate and bid-based.

In both cases, the advertiser must consider the potential value of a click from a given source.

This value is based on the type of individual the advertiser is expecting to receive as a visitor to his or her website, and what the advertiser can gain from that visit, usually revenue, both in the short term as well as in the long term.

As with other forms of advertising, targeting is key, and factors that often play into PPC campaigns include the target's interest (often defined by a search term they have entered into a search engine or the content of a page that they are browsing), intent (e.g., to purchase or not), location (for geo targeting), and the day and time that they are browsing.

In the flat-rate model, the advertiser and publisher agree upon a fixed amount that will be paid for each click.

In many cases, the publisher has a rate card that lists the Pay-per-click (PPC) within different areas of their website or network.

These various amounts are often related to the content on pages, with content that generally attracts more valuable visitors having a higher PPC than content that attracts less valuable visitors.

However, in many cases, advertisers can negotiate lower rates, especially when committing to a long-term or high-value contract.

The flat-rate model is particularly common to comparison shopping engines, which typically publish rate cards.[5] However, these rates are sometimes minimal, and advertisers can pay more for greater visibility.

These sites are usually neatly compartmentalized into product or service categories, allowing a high degree of targeting by advertisers.

In many cases, the entire core content of these sites is paid ads.

The advertiser signs a contract that allows them to compete against other advertisers in a private auction hosted by a publisher or, more commonly, an advertising network.

Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a given ad spot (often based on a keyword), usually using online tools to do so.

The auction plays out in an automated fashion every time a visitor triggers the ad spot.

When the ad spot is part of a search engine results page (SERP), the automated auction takes place whenever a search for the keyword that is being bid upon occurs.

All bids for the keyword that target the searcher's Geo-location, the day and time of the search, etc.

are then compared and the winner determined.

In situations where there are multiple ad spots, a common occurrence on SERPs, there can be multiple winners whose positions on the page are influenced by the amount each has bid.

The bid and Quality Score are used to give each advertiser's advert an ad rank.

The ad with the highest ad rank shows up first.

The predominant three match types for both Google and Bing are Broad, Exact and Phrase Match.

Google Ads and Bing Ads also offer the Broad Match Modifier type which differs from broad match in that the keyword must contain the actual keyword terms in any order and doesn't include relevant variations of the terms.[6] In addition to ad spots on SERPs, the major advertising networks allow for contextual ads to be placed on the properties of 3rd-parties with whom they have partnered.

These publishers sign up to host ads on behalf of the network.

In return, they receive a portion of the ad revenue that the network generates, which can be anywhere from 50% to over 80% of the gross revenue paid by advertisers.

These properties are often referred to as a content network and the ads on them as contextual ads because the ad spots are associated with keywords based on the context of the page on which they are found.

In general, ads on content networks have a much lower click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CR) than ads found on SERPs and consequently are less highly valued.

Content network properties can include websites, newsletters, and e-mails.[7] Advertisers pay for each single click they receive, with the actual amount paid based on the amount of bid.

It is common practice amongst auction hosts to charge a winning bidder just slightly more (e.g.

one penny) than the next highest bidder or the actual amount bid, whichever is lower.[8] This avoids situations where bidders are constantly adjusting their bids by very small amounts to see if they can still win the auction while paying just a little bit less per click.

In order to maximize success and achieve scale, automated bid management systems can be deployed.

These systems can be used directly by the advertiser, though they are more commonly used by advertising agencies that offer PPC bid management as a service.

These tools generally allow for bid management at scale, with thousands or even millions of PPC bids controlled by a highly automated system.

The system generally sets each bid based on the goal that has been set for it, such as maximize profit, maximize traffic, get the very targeted customer at break even, and so forth.

The system is usually tied into the advertiser's website and fed the results of each click, which then allows it to set bids.

The effectiveness of these systems is directly related to the quality and quantity of the performance data that they have to work with — low-traffic ads can lead to a scarcity of data problem that renders many bid management tools useless at worst, or inefficient at best.

As a rule, the contextual advertising system (Google AdWords, Yandex.Direct, etc.) uses an auction approach as the advertising payment system.

There are several sites that claim to be the first PPC model on the web,[9] with many appearing in the mid-1990s.

For example, in 1996, the first known and documented version of a PPC was included in a web directory called Planet Oasis.

This was a desktop application featuring links to informational and commercial websites, and it was developed by Ark Interface II, a division of Packard Bell NEC Computers.

The initial reactions from commercial companies to Ark Interface II's "pay-per-visit" model were skeptical, however.[10] By the end of 1997, over 400 major brands were paying between $.005 to $.25 per click plus a placement fee.[citation needed] In February 1998 Jeffrey Brewer of Goto.com, a 25-employee startup company (later Overture, now part of Yahoo!), presented a pay per click search engine proof-of-concept to the TED conference in California.[11] This presentation and the events that followed created the PPC advertising system.

Credit for the concept of the PPC model is generally given to Idealab and Goto.com founder Bill Gross.[12] Google started search engine advertising in December 1999.

It was not until October 2000 that the AdWords system was introduced, allowing advertisers to create text ads for placement on the Google search engine.

However, PPC was only introduced in 2002; until then, advertisements were charged at cost-per-thousand impressions or Cost per mille (CPM).

Overture has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, saying the rival search service overstepped its bounds with its ad-placement tools.[13] Although GoTo.com started PPC in 1998, Yahoo! did not start syndicating GoTo.com (later Overture) advertisers until November 2001.[14] Prior to this, Yahoo's primary source of SERPs advertising included contextual IAB advertising units (mainly 468x60 display ads).

When the syndication contract with Yahoo! was up for renewal in July 2003, Yahoo! announced intent to acquire Overture for $1.63 billion.[15] Today, companies such as adMarketplace, ValueClick and adknowledge offer PPC services, as an alternative to AdWords and AdCenter.

Among PPC providers, Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), Microsoft adCenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing had been the three largest network operators, all three operating under a bid-based model.[1] For example, in the year 2014, PPC(Adwords) or online advertising attributed approximately US$45 billion of the total US$66 billion of Google's annual revenue[16] In 2010, Yahoo and Microsoft launched their combined effort against Google, and Microsoft's Bing began to be the search engine that Yahoo used to provide its search results.[17] Since they joined forces, their PPC platform was renamed AdCenter.

Their combined network of third party sites that allow AdCenter ads to populate banner and text ads on their site is called BingAds.[18] In 2012, Google was initially ruled to have engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) in possibly the first legal case of its kind.

The ACCC ruled that Google was responsible for the content of its sponsored AdWords ads that had shown links to a car sales website Carsales.com.

The Ads had been shown by Google in response to a search for Honda Australia.

The ACCC said the ads were deceptive, as they suggested Carsales.com was connected to the Honda company.

The ruling was later overturned when Google appealed to the Australian High Court.

Google was found not liable for the misleading advertisements run through AdWords despite the fact that the ads were served up by Google and created using the company's tools.[19]

Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising.[1] SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings.[2] In 2007, U.S.

advertisers spent US $24.6 billion on Search engine marketing.[3] In Q2 2015, Google (73.7%) and the Yahoo/Bing (26.3%) partnership accounted for almost 100% of U.S.

search engine spend.[4] As of 2006, SEM was growing much faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing.[5] Managing search campaigns is either done directly with the SEM vendor or through an SEM tool provider.

It may also be self-serve or through an advertising agency.

As of October 2016, Google leads the global search engine market with a market share of 89.3%.

Bing comes second with a market share of 4.36%, Yahoo comes third with a market share of 3.3%, and Chinese search engine Baidu is fourth globally with a share of about 0.68%.[6] As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 1990s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly.

Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text[7] in 1996 and then Goto.com[8] in 1998.

Goto.com later changed its name[9] to Overture in 2001, was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing.

Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program.

By 2007, pay-per-click programs proved to be primary moneymakers[10] for search engines.

In a market dominated by Google, in 2009 Yahoo! and Microsoft announced the intention to forge an alliance.

The Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance eventually received approval from regulators in the US and Europe in February 2010.[11] Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged.

The term "Search engine marketing" was popularized by Danny Sullivan in 2001[12] to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals.

Search engine marketing uses at least five methods and metrics to optimize websites.[citation needed] Search engine marketing is a way to create and edit a website so that search engines rank it higher than other pages.

It should be also focused on keyword marketing or pay-per-click advertising (PPC).

The technology enables advertisers to bid on specific keywords or phrases and ensures ads appear with the results of search engines.

With the development of this system, the price is growing under a high level of competition.

Many advertisers prefer to expand their activities, including increasing search engines and adding more keywords.

The more advertisers are willing to pay for clicks, the higher the ranking for advertising, which leads to higher traffic.[15] PPC comes at a cost.

The higher position is likely to cost $5 for a given keyword, and $4.50 for a third location.

A third advertiser earns 10% less than the top advertiser while reducing traffic by 50%.[15] Investors must consider their return on investment when engaging in PPC campaigns.

Buying traffic via PPC will deliver a positive ROI when the total cost-per-click for a single conversion remains below the profit margin.

That way the amount of money spent to generate revenue is below the actual revenue generated.

There are many reasons explaining why advertisers choose the SEM strategy.

First, creating a SEM account is easy and can build traffic quickly based on the degree of competition.

The shopper who uses the search engine to find information tends to trust and focus on the links showed in the results pages.

However, a large number of online sellers do not buy search engine optimization to obtain higher ranking lists of search results but prefer paid links.

A growing number of online publishers are allowing search engines such as Google to crawl content on their pages and place relevant ads on it.[16] From an online seller's point of view, this is an extension of the payment settlement and an additional incentive to invest in paid advertising projects.

Therefore, it is virtually impossible for advertisers with limited budgets to maintain the highest rankings in the increasingly competitive search market.

Google's Search engine marketing is one of the western world's marketing leaders, while its Search engine marketing is its biggest source of profit.[17] Google's search engine providers are clearly ahead of the Yahoo and Bing network.

The display of unknown search results is free, while advertisers are willing to pay for each click of the ad in the sponsored search results.

Paid inclusion involves a search engine company charging fees for the inclusion of a website in their results pages.

Also known as sponsored listings, paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine companies either in the main results area or as a separately identified advertising area.

The fee structure is both a filter against superfluous submissions and a revenue generator.

Typically, the fee covers an annual subscription for one webpage, which will automatically be catalogued on a regular basis.

However, some companies are experimenting with non-subscription based fee structures where purchased listings are displayed permanently.

A per-click fee may also apply.

Each search engine is different.

Some sites allow only paid inclusion, although these have had little success.

More frequently, many search engines, like Yahoo!,[18] mix paid inclusion (per-page and per-click fee) with results from web crawling.

Others, like Google (and as of 2006, Ask.com[19][20]), do not let webmasters pay to be in their search engine listing (advertisements are shown separately and labeled as such).

Some detractors of paid inclusion allege that it causes searches to return results based more on the economic standing of the interests of a web site, and less on the relevancy of that site to end-users.

Often the line between pay per click advertising and paid inclusion is debatable.

Some have lobbied for any paid listings to be labeled as an advertisement, while defenders insist they are not actually ads since the webmasters do not control the content of the listing, its ranking, or even whether it is shown to any users.

Another advantage of paid inclusion is that it allows site owners to specify particular schedules for crawling pages.

In the general case, one has no control as to when their page will be crawled or added to a search engine index.

Paid inclusion proves to be particularly useful for cases where pages are dynamically generated and frequently modified.

Paid inclusion is a Search engine marketing method in itself, but also a tool of search engine optimization since experts and firms can test out different approaches to improving ranking and see the results often within a couple of days, instead of waiting weeks or months.

Knowledge gained this way can be used to optimize other web pages, without paying the search engine company.

SEM is the wider discipline that incorporates SEO.

SEM includes both paid search results (using tools like Google Adwords or Bing Ads, formerly known as Microsoft adCenter) and organic search results (SEO).

SEM uses paid advertising with AdWords or Bing Ads, pay per click (particularly beneficial for local providers as it enables potential consumers to contact a company directly with one click), article submissions, advertising and making sure SEO has been done.

A keyword analysis is performed for both SEO and SEM, but not necessarily at the same time.

SEM and SEO both need to be monitored and updated frequently to reflect evolving best practices.

In some contexts, the term SEM is used exclusively to mean pay per click advertising,[2] particularly in the commercial advertising and marketing communities which have a vested interest in this narrow definition.

Such usage excludes the wider search marketing community that is engaged in other forms of SEM such as search engine optimization and search retargeting.

Creating the link between SEO and PPC represents an integral part of the SEM concept.

Sometimes, especially when separate teams work on SEO and PPC and the efforts are not synced, positive results of aligning their strategies can be lost.

The aim of both SEO and PPC is maximizing the visibility in search and thus, their actions to achieve it should be centrally coordinated.

Both teams can benefit from setting shared goals and combined metrics, evaluating data together to determine future strategy or discuss which of the tools works better to get the traffic for selected keywords in the national and local search results.

Thanks to this, the search visibility can be increased along with optimizing both conversions and costs.[21] Another part of SEM is social media marketing (SMM).

SMM is a type of marketing that involves exploiting social media to influence consumers that one company’s products and/or services are valuable.[22] Some of the latest theoretical advances include Search engine marketing management (SEMM).

SEMM relates to activities including SEO but focuses on return on investment (ROI) management instead of relevant traffic building (as is the case of mainstream SEO).

SEMM also integrates organic SEO, trying to achieve top ranking without using paid means to achieve it, and pay per click SEO.

For example, some of the attention is placed on the web page layout design and how content and information is displayed to the website visitor.

SEO & SEM are two pillars of one marketing job and they both run side by side to produce much better results than focusing on only one pillar.

Paid search advertising has not been without controversy and the issue of how search engines present advertising on their search result pages has been the target of a series of studies and reports[23][24][25] by Consumer Reports WebWatch.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a letter[26] in 2002 about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group with ties to Ralph Nader.

Another ethical controversy associated with search marketing has been the issue of trademark infringement.

The debate as to whether third parties should have the right to bid on their competitors' brand names has been underway for years.

In 2009 Google changed their policy, which formerly prohibited these tactics, allowing 3rd parties to bid on branded terms as long as their landing page in fact provides information on the trademarked term.[27] Though the policy has been changed this continues to be a source of heated debate.[28] On April 24, 2012, many started to see that Google has started to penalize companies that are buying links for the purpose of passing off the rank.

The Google Update was called Penguin.

Since then, there have been several different Penguin/Panda updates rolled out by Google.

SEM has, however, nothing to do with link buying and focuses on organic SEO and PPC management.

As of October 20, 2014, Google had released three official revisions of their Penguin Update.

In 2013, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Lens.com, Inc.

v.

1-800 Contacts, Inc.

that online contact lens seller Lens.com did not commit trademark infringement when it purchased search advertisements using competitor 1-800 Contacts' federally registered 1800 CONTACTS trademark as a keyword.

In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging, among other things, that its trademark enforcement practices in the Search engine marketing space have unreasonably restrained competition in violation of the FTC Act.

1-800 Contacts has denied all wrongdoing and appeared before an FTC administrative law judge in April 2017.[29] AdWords is recognized as a web-based advertising utensil since it adopts keywords that can deliver adverts explicitly to web users looking for information in respect to a certain product or service.

It is flexible and provides customizable options like Ad Extensions, access to non-search sites, leveraging the display network to help increase brand awareness.

The project hinges on cost per click (CPC) pricing where the maximum cost per day for the campaign can be chosen, thus the payment of the service only applies if the advert has been clicked.

SEM companies have embarked on AdWords projects as a way to publicize their SEM and SEO services.

One of the most successful approaches to the strategy of this project was to focus on making sure that PPC advertising funds were prudently invested.

Moreover, SEM companies have described AdWords as a practical tool for increasing a consumer’s investment earnings on Internet advertising.

The use of conversion tracking and Google Analytics tools was deemed to be practical for presenting to clients the performance of their canvas from click to conversion.

AdWords project has enabled SEM companies to train their clients on the utensil and delivers better performance to the canvass.

The assistance of AdWord canvass could contribute to the growth of web traffic for a number of its consumer’s websites, by as much as 250% in only nine months.[30] Another way Search engine marketing is managed is by contextual advertising.

Here marketers place ads on other sites or portals that carry information relevant to their products so that the ads jump into the circle of vision of browsers who are seeking information from those sites.

A successful SEM plan is the approach to capture the relationships amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines.

Search engines were not important to some industries in the past, but over the past years the use of search engines for accessing information has become vital to increase business opportunities.[31] The use of SEM strategic tools for businesses such as tourism can attract potential consumers to view their products, but it could also pose various challenges.[32] These challenges could be the competition that companies face amongst their industry and other sources of information that could draw the attention of online consumers.[31] To assist the combat of challenges, the main objective for businesses applying SEM is to improve and maintain their ranking as high as possible on SERPs so that they can gain visibility.

Therefore, search engines are adjusting and developing algorithms and the shifting criteria by which web pages are ranked sequentially to combat against search engine misuse and spamming, and to supply the most relevant information to searchers.[31] This could enhance the relationship amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines by understanding the strategies of marketing to attract business.

Cost per action

Cost per action (CPA), also sometimes misconstrued in marketing environments as cost per acquisition[1], is an online advertising measurement and pricing model, referring to a specified action – for example a sale, click, or form submit (e.g., contact request, newsletter sign up, registration etc.)[2] Direct response advertisers often consider CPA the optimal way to buy online advertising, as an advertiser only considers the measured CPA goal as the important outcome of their activity[3] The desired action to be performed is determined by the advertiser.

In affiliate marketing, this means that advertisers only pay the affiliates for leads that result in the desired action such as a sale.[4] This removes the risk for the advertiser because they know in advance that they will not have to pay for bad referrals, and it encourages the affiliate to send good referrals.

Radio and TV stations also sometimes offer unsold inventory on a Cost per action basis, but this form of advertising is most often referred to as "per inquiry".

Although less common, print media will also sometimes be sold on a CPA basis.

CPA is sometimes referred to as "cost per acquisition", which has to do with the fact that many actions which advertisers are optimizing towards are about acquiring something (typically new customers by making sales), although this has led to confusion in the marketing industry as to the correct meaning of CPA.[5] Adding to the confusion, "cost per acquisition" may be used where it actually is customer acquisition cost (CAC).

Cost per action (CPA) is calculated as the cost divided by the number of actions being measured.

So for example, if the spend is $150 on a campaign and the actions attributed to this campaign is 10, this would give the campaign a Cost per action of $15.

Pay per lead (PPL) is a form of cost per acquisition, with the "acquisition" in this case being the delivery of a lead.

Online and Offline advertising payment model in which fees are charged based solely on the delivery of leads.

In a pay per lead agreement, the advertiser only pays for leads delivered under the terms of the agreement.

No payment is made for leads that don't meet the agreed-upon criteria.

The service provider company can use multiple methods to bring traffic to a landing page designed to generate lead with validation and tracking system to make sure the client gets authentic valid leads.

Leads may be delivered by phone under the pay per call model.

Conversely, leads may be delivered electronically, such as by email, SMS, or a ping/post of the data directly to a database.

The information delivered may consist of as little as an email address, or it may involve a detailed profile including multiple contact points and the answers to qualification questions.

There are numerous risks associated with any Pay Per Lead campaign, including the potential for fraudulent activity by incentive marketing partners.

Some fraudulent leads are easy to spot.

Nonetheless, it is advisable to make a regular audit of the results.

In cost per lead campaigns, advertisers pay for an interested lead (hence, cost per lead) — i.e.

the contact information of a person interested in the advertiser's product or service.

CPL campaigns are suitable for brand marketers and direct response marketers looking to engage consumers at multiple touchpoints — by building a newsletter list, community site, reward program or member acquisition program.

In CPA campaigns, the advertiser typically pays for a completed sale involving a credit card transaction.

There are other important differentiators: Pay per click (PPC) and cost per click (CPC) are both forms of CPA (Cost per action) with the action being a click.[6][7] PPC is generally used to refer to paid search marketing such as Google's AdSense or Google Ads.

The advertiser pays each time someone clicks on their text or display ad.

When advertising in the Google platform, CPC bidding means that an advertiser pays for each click of an ad placed and that, in ad campaign, he can set a price cap as a maximum CPC bid.[8] Here, the CPC pricing is also sometimes referred to as PPC.

In the Facebook social networking platform, the term pertains to the average cost for each link click and it serves as a metric in online advertising for benchmarking online ad efficiency and performance.[9] CPC in the Amazon Marketing Service (AMS) follows the same model, although it is reported that this platform charge lower CPCs compared to other advertising platforms with Google charging the highest.[10] Also, pay per download (PPD) is another form of CPA where the user completes an action to download a digital content such as apps, digital media, and other files.[11] The actions can include completing surveys or answering quiz in order to generate revenue from a third-party advertiser.[12] With the payment of CPA campaigns being on an "action" being delivered, accurate tracking is of prime importance to media owners.

This is a complex subject in itself, however, if usually performed in three main ways: A related term, effective Cost per action (eCPA), is used to measure the effectiveness of advertising inventory purchased (by the advertiser) via a cost per click, cost per impression, or cost per thousand basis.

In other words, the eCPA tells the advertiser what they would have paid if they had purchased the advertising inventory on a Cost per action basis (instead of a cost per click, cost per impression, or cost per mille/thousand basis).

If the advertiser is purchasing inventory with a CPA target, instead of paying per action at a fixed rate, the goal of the effective CPA (eCPA) should always be below the maximum CPA.

As described by Yang's Law, eCPA<CPA.

This fundamental view of what the performance of a conversion-based campaign should be is served as the baseline for many buy-side platform optimization algorithms.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.[1][2][3][4][5] The industry has four core players:[citation needed] The market has grown in complexity, resulting in the emergence of a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates, and specialized third party vendors.[citation needed] Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree because affiliates often use regular advertising methods.

Those methods include organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (PPC – Pay Per Click), e-mail marketing, content marketing, and (in some sense) display advertising.

On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.[citation needed] Affiliate marketing is commonly confused with referral marketing, as both forms of marketing use third parties to drive sales to the retailer.

The two forms of marketing are differentiated, however, in how they drive sales, where Affiliate marketing relies purely on financial motivations, while referral marketing relies more on trust and personal relationships.[citation needed] Affiliate marketing is frequently overlooked by advertisers.[6] While search engines, e-mail, and web site syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, Affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile.

Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.[citation needed] The concept of revenue sharing—paying commission for referred business—predates Affiliate marketing and the Internet.

The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream e-commerce happened in November 1994,[7] almost four years after the origination of the World Wide Web.

The concept of Affiliate marketing on the Internet was conceived of, put into practice and patented by William J.

Tobin, the founder of PC Flowers & Gifts.

Launched on the Prodigy Network in 1989, PC Flowers & Gifts remained on the service until 1996.

By 1993, PC Flowers & Gifts generated sales in excess of $6 million per year on the Prodigy service.

In 1998, PC Flowers and Gifts developed the business model of paying a commission on sales to the Prodigy Network.[8][9] In 1994, Tobin launched a beta version of PC Flowers & Gifts on the Internet in cooperation with IBM, who owned half of Prodigy.[10] By 1995 PC Flowers & Gifts had launched a commercial version of the website and had 2,600 Affiliate marketing partners on the World Wide Web.

Tobin applied for a patent on tracking and Affiliate marketing on January 22, 1996, and was issued U.S.

Patent number 6,141,666 on Oct 31, 2000.

Tobin also received Japanese Patent number 4021941 on Oct 5, 2007, and U.S.

Patent number 7,505,913 on Mar 17, 2009, for Affiliate marketing and tracking.[11] In July 1998 PC Flowers and Gifts merged with Fingerhut and Federated Department Stores.[12] In November 1994, CDNow launched its BuyWeb program.

CDNow had the idea that music-oriented websites could review or list albums on their pages that their visitors might be interested in purchasing.

These websites could also offer a link that would take visitors directly to CDNow to purchase the albums.

The idea for remote purchasing originally arose from conversations with music label Geffen Records in the fall of 1994.

The management at Geffen wanted to sell its artists' CD's directly from its website but did not want to implement this capability itself.

Geffen asked CDNow if it could design a program where CDNow would handle the order fulfillment.

Geffen realized that CDNow could link directly from the artist on its website to Geffen's website, bypassing the CDNow home page and going directly to an artist's music page.[13] Amazon.com (Amazon) launched its associate program in July 1996: Amazon associates could place banner or text links on their site for individual books, or link directly to the Amazon home page.[14] When visitors clicked on the associate's website to go to Amazon and purchase a book, the associate received a commission.

Amazon was not the first merchant to offer an affiliate program, but its program was the first to become widely known and serve as a model for subsequent programs.[15][16] In February 2000, Amazon announced that it had been granted a patent[17] on components of an affiliate program.

The patent application was submitted in June 1997, which predates most affiliate programs, but not PC Flowers & Gifts.com (October 1994), AutoWeb.com (October 1995), Kbkids.com/BrainPlay.com (January 1996), EPage (April 1996), and several others.[18] Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception.

The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the Internet, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business.

According to one report, the total sales amount generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the United Kingdom alone.

The estimates were £1.35 billion in sales in 2005.[19] MarketingSherpa's research team estimated that, in 2006, affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources in retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation other than contextual advertising programs.[20] In 2006, the most active sectors for Affiliate marketing were the adult gambling, retail industries and file-sharing services.[21]:149–150 The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance, and travel sectors.[21] Soon after these sectors came the entertainment (particularly gaming) and Internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors.

Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from business-to-business marketers and advertisers in using Affiliate marketing as part of their mix.[21]:149–150 Websites and services based on Web 2.0 concepts—blogging and interactive online communities, for example—have impacted the Affiliate marketing world as well.

These platforms allow improved communication between merchants and affiliates.

Web 2.0 platforms have also opened Affiliate marketing channels to personal bloggers, writers, and independent website owners.

Contextual ads allow publishers with lower levels of web traffic to place affiliate ads on websites.[citation needed] Forms of new media have also diversified how companies, brands, and ad networks serve ads to visitors.

For instance, YouTube allows video-makers to embed advertisements through Google's affiliate network.[citation needed] New developments have made it more difficult for unscrupulous affiliates to make money.

Emerging black sheep are detected and made known to the Affiliate marketing community with much greater speed and efficiency.[citation needed] Eighty percent of affiliate programs today use revenue sharing or pay per sale (PPS) as a compensation method, nineteen percent use cost per action (CPA), and the remaining programs use other methods such as cost per click (CPC) or cost per mille (CPM, cost per estimated 1000 views).[22] Within more mature markets, less than one percent of traditional Affiliate marketing programs today use cost per click and cost per mille.

However, these compensation methods are used heavily in display advertising and paid search.

Cost per mille requires only that the publisher make the advertising available on his or her website and display it to the page visitors in order to receive a commission.

Pay per click requires one additional step in the conversion process to generate revenue for the publisher: A visitor must not only be made aware of the advertisement but must also click on the advertisement to visit the advertiser's website.

Cost per click was more common in the early days of Affiliate marketing but has diminished in use over time due to click fraud issues very similar to the click fraud issues modern search engines are facing today.

Contextual advertising programs are not considered in the statistic pertaining to the diminished use of cost per click, as it is uncertain if contextual advertising can be considered Affiliate marketing.

While these models have diminished in mature e-commerce and online advertising markets they are still prevalent in some more nascent industries.

China is one example where Affiliate marketing does not overtly resemble the same model in the West.

With many affiliates being paid a flat "Cost Per Day" with some networks offering Cost Per Click or CPM.

In the case of cost per mille/click, the publisher is not concerned about whether a visitor is a member of the audience that the advertiser tries to attract and is able to convert because at this point the publisher has already earned his commission.

This leaves the greater, and, in case of cost per mille, the full risk and loss (if the visitor cannot be converted) to the advertiser.

Cost per action/sale methods require that referred visitors do more than visit the advertiser's website before the affiliate receives a commission.

The advertiser must convert that visitor first.

It is in the best interest of the affiliate to send the most closely targeted traffic to the advertiser as possible to increase the chance of a conversion.

The risk and loss are shared between the affiliate and the advertiser.

Affiliate marketing is also called "performance marketing", in reference to how sales employees are typically being compensated.

Such employees are typically paid a commission for each sale they close, and sometimes are paid performance incentives for exceeding objectives.[23] Affiliates are not employed by the advertiser whose products or services they promote, but the compensation models applied to Affiliate marketing are very similar to the ones used for people in the advertisers' internal sales department.

The phrase, "Affiliates are an extended sales force for your business", which is often used to explain Affiliate marketing, is not completely accurate.

The primary difference between the two is that affiliate marketers provide little if any influence on a possible prospect in the conversion process once that prospect is directed to the advertiser's website.

The sales team of the advertiser, however, does have the control and influence up to the point where the prospect either a) signs the contract, or b) completes the purchase.

Some advertisers offer multi-tier programs that distribute commission into a hierarchical referral network of sign-ups and sub-partners.

In practical terms, publisher "A" signs up to the program with an advertiser and gets rewarded for the agreed activity conducted by a referred visitor.

If publisher "A" attracts publishers "B" and "C" to sign up for the same program using his sign-up code, all future activities performed by publishers "B" and "C" will result in additional commission (at a lower rate) for publisher "A".

Two-tier programs exist in the minority of affiliate programs; most are simply one-tier.

Referral programs beyond two-tier resemble multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing but are different: Multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing associations tend to have more complex commission requirements/qualifications than standard affiliate programs.[citation needed] Merchants favor Affiliate marketing because in most cases it uses a "pay for performance" model, meaning that the merchant does not incur a marketing expense unless results are accrued (excluding any initial setup cost).[24] Some merchants run their own (in-house) affiliate programs using dedicated software, while others use third-party intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates.

There are two different types of affiliate management methods used by merchants: standalone software or hosted services, typically called affiliate networks.

Payouts to affiliates or publishers can be made by the networks on behalf of the merchant, by the network, consolidated across all merchants where the publisher has a relationship with and earned commissions or directly by the merchant itself.

Uncontrolled affiliate programs aid rogue affiliates, who use spamming,[25] trademark infringement, false advertising, cookie stuffing, typosquatting,[26] and other unethical methods that have given Affiliate marketing a negative reputation.

Some merchants are using outsourced (affiliate) program management (OPM) companies, which are themselves often run by affiliate managers and network program managers.[27] OPM companies perform affiliate program management for the merchants as a service, similar to the role an advertising agencies serves in offline marketing.

Affiliate websites are often categorized by merchants (advertisers) and affiliate networks.

There are currently no industry-wide standards for the categorization.

The following types of websites are generic, yet are commonly understood and used by affiliate marketers.

Affiliate networks that already have several advertisers typically also have a large pool of publishers.

These publishers could be potentially recruited, and there is also an increased chance that publishers in the network apply to the program on their own, without the need for recruitment efforts by the advertiser.

Relevant websites that attract the same target audiences as the advertiser but without competing with it are potential affiliate partners as well.

Vendors or existing customers can also become recruits if doing so makes sense and does not violate any laws or regulations (such as with pyramid schemes).

Almost any website could be recruited as an affiliate publisher, but high traffic websites are more likely interested in (for their sake) low-risk cost per mille or medium-risk cost per click deals rather than higher-risk cost per action or revenue share deals.[28] There are three primary ways to locate affiliate programs for a target website: If the above locations do not yield information pertaining to affiliates, it may be the case that there exists a non-public affiliate program.

Utilizing one of the common website correlation methods may provide clues about the affiliate network.

The most definitive method for finding this information is to contact the website owner directly if a contact method can be located.

Since the emergence of Affiliate marketing, there has been little control over affiliate activity.

Unscrupulous affiliates have used spam, false advertising, forced clicks (to get tracking cookies set on users' computers), adware, and other methods to drive traffic to their sponsors.

Although many affiliate programs have terms of service that contain rules against spam, this marketing method has historically proven to attract abuse from spammers.

In the infancy of Affiliate marketing, many Internet users held negative opinions due to the tendency of affiliates to use spam to promote the programs in which they were enrolled.[29] As Affiliate marketing matured, many affiliate merchants have refined their terms and conditions to prohibit affiliates from spamming.

A browser extension is a plug-in that extends the functionality of a web browser.

Some extensions are authored using web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

Most modern web browsers have a whole slew of third-party extensions available for download.

In recent years, there has been a constant rise in the number of malicious browser extensions flooding the web.

Malicious browser extensions will often appear to be legitimate as they seem to originate from vendor websites and come with glowing customer reviews.[30] In the case of Affiliate marketing, these malicious extensions are often used to redirect a user's browser to send fake clicks to websites that are supposedly part of legitimate Affiliate marketing programs.

Typically, users are completely unaware this is happening other than their browser performance slowing down.

Websites end up paying for fake traffic numbers, and users are unwitting participants in these ad schemes.

As search engines have become more prominent, some affiliate marketers have shifted from sending e-mail spam to creating automatically generated web pages that often contain product data feeds provided by merchants.

The goal of such web pages is to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, also known as spamdexing.

Each page can be targeted to a different niche market through the use of specific keywords, with the result being a skewed form of search engine optimization.

Spam is the biggest threat to organic search engines, whose goal is to provide quality search results for keywords or phrases entered by their users.

Google's PageRank algorithm update ("BigDaddy") in February 2006—the final stage of Google's major update ("Jagger") that began in mid-summer 2005—specifically targeted spamdexing with great success.

This update thus enabled Google to remove a large amount of mostly computer-generated duplicate content from its index.[31] Websites consisting mostly of affiliate links have previously held a negative reputation for underdelivering quality content.

In 2005 there were active changes made by Google, where certain websites were labeled as "thin affiliates".[32] Such websites were either removed from Google's index or were relocated within the results page (i.e., moved from the top-most results to a lower position).

To avoid this categorization, affiliate marketer webmasters must create quality content on their websites that distinguishes their work from the work of spammers or banner farms, which only contain links leading to merchant sites.

Although it differs from spyware, adware often uses the same methods and technologies.

Merchants initially were uninformed about adware, what impact it had, and how it could damage their brands.

Affiliate marketers became aware of the issue much more quickly, especially because they noticed that adware often overwrites tracking cookies, thus resulting in a decline of commissions.

Affiliates not employing adware felt that it was stealing commission from them.

Adware often has no valuable purpose and rarely provides any useful content to the user, who is typically unaware that such software is installed on his/her computer.

Affiliates discussed the issues in Internet forums and began to organize their efforts.

They believed that the best way to address the problem was to discourage merchants from advertising via adware.

Merchants that were either indifferent to or supportive of adware were exposed by affiliates, thus damaging those merchants' reputations and tarnishing their Affiliate marketing efforts.

Many affiliates either terminated the use of such merchants or switched to a competitor's affiliate program.

Eventually, affiliate networks were also forced by merchants and affiliates to take a stand and ban certain adware publishers from their network.

The result was Code of Conduct by Commission Junction/beFree and Performics,[33] LinkShare's Anti-Predatory Advertising Addendum,[34] and ShareASale's complete ban of software applications as a medium for affiliates to promote advertiser offers.[35] Regardless of the progress made, adware continues to be an issue, as demonstrated by the class action lawsuit against ValueClick and its daughter company Commission Junction filed on April 20, 2007.[36] Affiliates were among the earliest adopters of pay per click advertising when the first pay-per-click search engines emerged during the end of the 1990s.

Later in 2000 Google launched its pay per click service, Google AdWords, which is responsible for the widespread use and acceptance of pay per click as an advertising channel.

An increasing number of merchants engaged in pay per click advertising, either directly or via a search marketing agency, and realized that this space was already occupied by their affiliates.

Although this situation alone created advertising channel conflicts and debates between advertisers and affiliates, the largest issue concerned affiliates bidding on advertisers names, brands, and trademarks.[37] Several advertisers began to adjust their affiliate program terms to prohibit their affiliates from bidding on those type of keywords.

Some advertisers, however, did and still do embrace this behavior, going so far as to allow, or even encourage, affiliates to bid on any term, including the advertiser's trademarks.

Bloggers and other publishers may not be aware of disclosure guidelines set forth by the FTC.

Guidelines affect celebrity endorsements, advertising language, and blogger compensation.[38] Affiliate marketing currently lacks industry standards for training and certification.

There are some training courses and seminars that result in certifications; however, the acceptance of such certifications is mostly due to the reputation of the individual or company issuing the certification.

Affiliate marketing is not commonly taught in universities, and only a few college instructors work with Internet marketers to introduce the subject to students majoring in marketing.[39] Education occurs most often in "real life" by becoming involved and learning the details as time progresses.

Although there are several books on the topic, some so-called "how-to" or "silver bullet" books instruct readers to manipulate holes in the Google algorithm, which can quickly become out of date,[39] or suggest strategies no longer endorsed or permitted by advertisers.[citation needed] Outsourced Program Management companies typically combine formal and informal training, providing much of their training through group collaboration and brainstorming.

Such companies also try to send each marketing employee to the industry conference of their choice.[40] Other training resources used include online forums, weblogs, podcasts, video seminars, and specialty websites.

A code of conduct was released by affiliate networks Commission Junction/beFree and Performics in December 2002 to guide practices and adherence to ethical standards for online advertising.

In 2008 the state of New York passed a law asserting sales tax jurisdiction over Amazon.com sales to New York residents.

New York was aware of Amazon affiliates operating within the state.

In Quill Corp.

v.

North Dakota, the US Supreme Court ruled that the presence of independent sales representatives may allow a state to require sales tax collections.

New York determined that affiliates are such independent sales representatives.

The New York law became known as "Amazon's law" and was quickly emulated by other states.[41] While that was the first time states successfully addressed the internet tax gap, since 2018 states have been free to assert sales tax jurisdiction over sales to their residents regardless of the presence of retailer affiliates.[42] Many voucher code web sites use a click-to-reveal format, which requires the web site user to click to reveal the voucher code.

The action of clicking places the cookie on the website visitor's computer.

In the United Kingdom, the IAB Affiliate Council under chair Matt Bailey announced regulations[43] that stated that "Affiliates must not use a mechanism whereby users are encouraged to click to interact with content where it is unclear or confusing what the outcome will be."

Post-click marketing

Post-click marketing is emerging as a recognized practice that aims at improving sales and marketing results by focusing on website visitors when they respond to online marketing activities such as pay per click advertising, HTML e-mails, and paid searches with the objective on increasing conversion rates.[1] It is focused on those sources of traffic where someone clicks from such as display advertisements, keywords searching, email or social media links and so on.

It involves the theoretical models of behavioral marketing to create the profile of web visitor’s online behavior.

Therefore, figuring out the context of the target audience is the first step to making an effective Post-click marketing strategy.[2] Next, those clicked visitors should be segmented into different content and communication channels on basis of their needs and interests, so the navigation of the landing page is especially important for the final conversions.

The MECE principle can help the website segment the choices of visitors exhaustively.

During this period, READY frameworks in content marketing are suggested to adopt, making the content persuasive.

Besides, the presentation of the landing page including the positions, layouts, images and interaction features also contributes to the final conversions.[2] Finally, conversion optimisation involves many performance metrics such as CPA (cost per acquisition), AOV (average order value), ROAS (return on ad spend), LTV (lifetime value) and ROI (overall return on investment).

Post-click marketing can also increase its efficiency to create production and improvements continuously by integrating agile marketing practices.[2] Post-click marketing relies on specific software and services that go beyond the information collected by popular web analytic tools such as Google Analytics.

For example, they distinguish themselves in their ability to supplement IP addresses with data from third-party sources, enabling marketing managers to view the name of the company visiting their website, their location, and the industry they are in.

There are many ways in which this information gathered about website visitors can be used.

Marketers might wish to use the information to detect if they are attracting their desired target audience to their landing pages, or to personalize the content based on the visitor’s language or location.

Inside Sales tend to use it for lead generation purposes, writing emails to email contacts they can find for the visiting organization.

Post-click marketing solutions appeal on many fronts: These tools are not so much lead generation software but more data extraction tools that can assist the early stages of a lead generation process.

With pressure to generate more leads with small budgets, these services are likely to grow in usage.[3] If used properly, they provide a powerful insight to marketing executives who want to measure online campaigns based on the type of audiences they are attracting, and can be helpful in engaging visitors who normally go totally unidentified by sales and marketing.

Cost per impression

Cost per thousand impressions (CPM), is a term used in traditional advertising media selection, as well as online advertising and marketing related to web traffic.[1] It refers to the cost of traditional advertising or internet marketing or email advertising campaigns, where advertisers pay each time an ad is displayed.

CPI is the cost or expense incurred for each potential customer who views the advertisement(s), while CPM refers to the cost or expense incurred for every thousand potential customers who view the advertisement(s).[2] CPM is an initialism for cost per mille, with mille being Latin for thousand.

Cost per impression, along with pay-per-click (PPC) and cost per order, is used to assess the cost-effectiveness and profitability of online advertising.[2] CPI is the closest online advertising strategy to those offered in other media such as television, radio or print, which sell advertising based on estimated viewership, listenership or readership.

CPI provides a comparable measure to contrast internet advertising with other media.

An impression is the display of an ad to a user while viewing a web page.

A single web page may contain multiple ads.

In such cases, a single pageview would result in one impression for each ad displayed.

In order to count the impressions served as accurately as possible and prevent fraud, an ad server may exclude certain non-qualifying activities such as page-refreshes or other user actions from counting as impressions.

When advertising rates are described as CPM or CPI, this is the amount paid for every thousand qualifying impressions served at cost.

Cost per impression is derived from advertising costs and the number of impressions.

Cost per impression is often expressed as Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM) to make the numbers easier to manage.[2]

Cost per lead

Cost per lead, often abbreviated as CPL, is an online advertising pricing model, where the advertiser pays for an explicit sign-up from a consumer interested in the advertiser's offer.

It is also commonly called online lead generation.

Contrary to cost per mille (CPM) and cost per click (CPC) pricing models, where advertisers are charged for impressions (a.k.a.

"views") and clicks, respectively, in a CPL pricing model advertisers pay only for a qualified sign-up regardless of how many impressions or clicks their advertisement receives.

CPL advertising enables advertisers to generate guaranteed returns on their online advertising money.

There are two types of leads that advertisers can buy in the lead generation market: Sales leads and marketing leads.

Sales leads are generated on the basis of demographic criteria such as FICO score, income, age, HHI, etc.

These leads may be exclusive (sold only to one advertiser) or non-exclusive (sold to multiple advertisers).

Sales leads are typically followed-up through phone calls by the sales force and are commonly available for a wide range of verticals including mortgage, insurance and home services.

Marketing leads are brand-specific leads generated for a unique advertiser offer.

In direct contrast to sales leads, marketing leads are sold only once.

Because transparency is a necessary requisite for generating marketing leads, marketing lead campaigns can be optimized by mapping leads to their sources.

In recent times, due to the growth of transparency in the online lead generation market, the marketing leads segment of online lead generation segment has grown rapidly.

Fortune 500 marketers, non-profit organizations and political candidates such as the 2008 Obama campaign are using CPL advertising to build e-newsletter databases, community sites, and other acquisition programs with consumers that are passionate about their brands/causes.

In CPL campaigns, advertisers pay for an interested lead – i.e.

the contact information of a person interested in the advertiser's product or service.

CPL campaigns are suitable for brand marketers and direct response marketers looking to engage consumers at multiple touchpoints – by building a newsletter list, community site, reward program or member acquisition program.

In Cost per action campaigns (CPA), the advertiser typically pays for a completed sale involving a credit card transaction.

CPA is all about 'now' – it focuses on driving consumers to buy at that exact moment.

If a visitor to the website does not buy anything, there is no easy way to remarket to them.

There are other important differentiators: CPL advertising is more appropriate for advertisers looking to deploy acquisition campaigns by re-marketing to end consumers through e-newsletters, community sites, reward programs, loyalty programs and other engagement vehicles.

Pay per sale

Pay-per-sale or PPS (sometimes referred to as cost-per-sale or CPS) is an online advertisement pricing system where the publisher or website owner is paid on the basis of the number of sales that are directly generated by an advertisement.

It is a variant of the CPA (cost per action) model, where the advertiser pays the publisher and/or website owner in proportion to the number of actions committed by the readers or visitors to the website.[1] In many cases, it is impractical to track all the sales generated by an advertisement.

However, it is more easily tracked for full online transactions such as selling songs directly on the internet.

Unique identifiers, which can be stored in cookies or included in the URL, are used to track the movement of the prospective buyer to ensure that all such sales are attributed to the advertisement in question.

Some companies handle transactions "offline," meaning sales driven by online traffic are closed via inbound telephone calls or in person rather than online.

This model bridges the gap between online and offline platforms.[2] In these cases, a cookie-based rotating system of telephone numbers can be used to accurately trace a phone call to the source online visitor.

This way, a phone call that converts into business can be traced to the keyword search term that drove the phone call.

As a result, bids on the source traffic can be appropriately adjusted and managed.

Usually, it is the advertiser that determines what constitutes a valid lead or a qualified call to be paid.[2] Pay-per-Sale Search Engine Marketing is a variant of pay-per-sale, whereby the traffic source is largely search engine traffic such as that from Google's AdWords "pay-per-click" system.

The business model means that merchants no longer bear the cost of "pay-per-click"; instead, the "pay-per-sale" provider takes on the risk of conversion.

CPS belongs to the larger family of CPA, which is different from Cost Per Impression in which advertisers pay every time their advertisement is displayed, irrespective of whether the display created any action on the part of reader or visitor to the website or not.

Affiliate Networks usually offer the "pay-per-sale" business model and have done so since inception.

These are firms that manage affiliates for their clients and often work with websites that accept advertisements.[3] The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as retailer or brand), the network, the publisher (also known as 'the affiliate'), and the customer.

Typically, affiliate networks such as ValueClick or Commission Junction will connect merchants (advertisers) with publishers, or owners of sites, which can send traffic to the merchants' sites in exchange for a bounty, or commission for each sale delivered.[4] However, there is typically an upfront set-up fee, as well as monthly minimum charges for the advertiser, in addition to relatively stringent requirements around entry into the network to begin with.

An individual or an organization could also set up his or its own affiliate network.

This could address one of the risks of this model, which is less commitment on the part of the affiliates.[3]

Content marketing

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.[1] It is often used by businesses in order to: Content marketing attracts prospects and transforms prospects into customers by creating and sharing valuable free content.

Content marketing helps companies create sustainable brand loyalty, provides valuable information to consumers, and creates a willingness to purchase products from the company in the future.

This relatively new form of marketing does not involve direct sales.

Instead, it builds trust and rapport with the audience.[2] Unlike other forms of online marketing, Content marketing relies on anticipating and meeting an existing customer need for information, as opposed to creating demand for a new need.

As James O'Brien of Contently wrote on Mashable, "The idea central to Content marketing is that a brand must give something valuable to get something valuable in return.

Instead of the commercial, be the show.

Instead of the banner ad, be the feature story."[3] Content marketing requires continuous delivery of large amounts of content, preferably within a Content marketing strategy.[4] When businesses pursue Content marketing, the main focus should be the needs of the prospect or customer.

Once a business has identified the customer's need, information can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, email newsletters, case studies, podcasts, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, blogs, etc.[5] Most of these formats belong to the digital channel.

Digital Content marketing is a management process that uses electronic channels to identify, forecast, and satisfy the content requirements of a particular audience.

It must be consistently updated and added to in order to influence the behavior of customers.

Traditional marketers have long used content to disseminate information about a brand and build a brand's reputation.

Taking advantage of technological advances in transportation and communication, business owners started to apply Content marketing techniques in the late 19th century.

They also attempted to build connections with their customers.

For example: During the golden age of TV, between the 1940s and 1950s, advertising took over the media.

Companies focused on sales rather than connecting with the public.

There were few ventures into Content marketing and not many prominent campaigns.

During the baby boom era, Kellogg’s began selling sugary cereal to children.

With this change in business model came sociable animal mascots, lively animated commercials and the back of the cereal box as a form of targeted Content marketing.

Infographics were born in this era.

This represented a new approach to make a brand memorable with the audience.

In the 1990s, everything changed for marketers.

The arrival of computers and the Internet made websites and blogs flourish, and corporations found Content marketing opportunities through email.

E-commerce adaptations and digital distribution became the foundation of marketing strategy.

Internet also helped Content marketing become a mainstream form of marketing.

Traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, radio and TV started to lose their power in the marketplace.

Companies started to promote and sell their products digitally.[10] The phrase "Content marketing" was used as early as 1996,[11] when John F.

Oppedahl led a roundtable for journalists at the American Society for Newspaper Editors.

By the late 2000s, when social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube were born, online Content marketing was accessible, shareable and on-demand anytime worldwide.

By 2014, Forbes Magazine's website had written about the seven most popular ways companies use Content marketing.[14] In it, the columnist points out that by 2013, use of Content marketing had jumped across corporations from 60% a year or so before, to 93%[15] as part of their overall marketing strategy.

Despite the fact that 70% of organizations are creating more content, only 21% of marketers think they are successful at tracking return on investment.

Today, Content marketing has become a powerful model for marketers.

Storytelling is part of it, and they must convey the companies’ messages or goal to their desired audience without pushing them to just buy the product or service.

The rise of Content marketing has turned many traditional businesses into media publishing companies.[16] For example: The rise of Content marketing has also accelerated the growth of online platforms, such as YouTube, Yelp, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, and more.

For example: Businesses actively curate their content on these platforms with hopes to expand their reach to new audiences.

Part of transitioning to a media publishing mindset requires a change in structure and process to create content at the speed of culture.

The old model you see on shows like Mad Men is too slow and cumbersome.

By the time an idea becomes an ad, it is out of date.

Marketers are increasingly co-locating insights, creative, production, legal approval, and placement to increase interaction and speed in producing and distributing content.

Marketing content production is transforming from an advertising agency model to a newsroom model.[23] Metrics to determine the success of Content marketing are often tied to the original goals of the campaign.

For example, for each of these goals, a content marketer may measure the different engagement and conversion metrics: Businesses focused on expanding their reach to more customers will want to pay attention to the increase in the volume of visitors, as well as the quality of those interactions.

Traditional measures of volume include the number of visitors to a page and number of emails collected, while time spent on page and click-through to other pages/ photos are good indicators for engagement.

Businesses want to measure the impact that their messages have on consumers.

Brand health refers to the positive or negative feedback that a company gets.

It also measures how important a brand is for consumers.

With this companies want to find out if brand reputation influences their customers to make a purchase.[24] Measures in this part comprise For businesses hoping to reach not only more - but also new - types of customers online, they should pay attention to the demographics of new visitors, as evidenced by cookies that can be installed, different sources of traffic, different online behaviors, and/or different buying habits of online visitors.

Businesses focused on increasing sales through Content marketing should look at traditional e-commerce metrics including click-through-rate from a product-page to check-out and completion rates at the check-out.

Altogether, these form a conversion funnel.

Moreover, to better understand customers' buying habits, they should look at other engagement metrics like time spent per page, number of product-page visits per user, and re-engagement.

Refers to companies that want to analyze whether their social media campaigns are generating commentary among consumers.

This helps them to come up with ways to improve their product and service.

This involves "high level of brand engagement and builds brand loyalty".[26] Examples: Digital Content marketing, which is a management process, uses digital products through different electronic channels to identify, forecast and satisfy the necessity of the customers.[27] It must be consistently maintained to preserve or change the behavior of customers.[citation needed] Examples: The supply chain of digital Content marketing mainly consists of commercial stakeholders and end-user stakeholders which represent content providers and distributors and customers separately.[34] In this process, distributors manage the interface between the publisher and the consumer, then distributors could identify the content that consumers need through external channels and implement marketing strategies.

For instance, Library and document supply agencies as intermediaries can deliver the digital content of e-books, and e-journal articles to the users according to their search results through the electronic channels.

Another example is when consumers pay for the acquisition of some MP3 downloads, search engines can be used to identify different music providers and smart agents can be used by consumers to search for multiple music provider sites.

In a word, the digital Content marketing process needs to be conducted at the business level and service experience level because when consumers are accessing digital content, their own experience depends on the complex network of relationships in the Content marketing channels such as websites and videos.

The consumers interact directly with distributors in the big supply chain through various digital products which have an important role in meeting the requirements of the consumers.

The design and user experience of these channels directly decides the success of digital Content marketing.[27] Electronic services refer to interactive network services.[35] In the electronic service, the interaction between the customer and the organizations mainly through the network technology, such as using E-mail, telephone, online chat windows for communication.

Electronic services are different from traditional services and they are not affected by distance restrictions and opening hours.

Digital Content marketing through electronic service is usually served together with other channels to achieve marketing purposes including face-to-face, postal, and other remote services.

Information companies provide different messages and documents to customers who use multiple search engines on different sites and set up access rights for business groups.

These are some channels of digital Content marketing.[27]

Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads, Microsoft adCenter and MSN adCenter) is a service that provides pay per click advertising on both the Bing and Yahoo! search engines.

As of June 2015, Bing Ads has 33% market share in the United States.[1] Microsoft was the last of the "big three" search engines (which also includes Google and Yahoo!) to develop its own system for delivering pay per click (PPC) ads.

Until the beginning of 2006, all of the ads displayed on the MSN Search engine were supplied by Overture (and later Yahoo!).

MSN collected a portion of the ad revenue in return for displaying Yahoo!'s ads on its search engine.[2] As search marketing grew, Microsoft began developing its own system, MSN adCenter, for selling PPC advertisements directly to advertisers.

As the system was phased in, MSN Search (now Bing) showed Yahoo! and adCenter advertising in its search results.

Microsoft effort to create AdCenter was led by Tarek Najm, then general manager of the MSN division of Microsoft.

In June 2006, the contract between Yahoo! and Microsoft had expired and Microsoft was displaying only ads from adCenter until 2010.

In November 2006 Microsoft acquired DeepMetrix, a company situated in Gatineau, Canada, that created web-analytics software.

Microsoft has built new product adCenter Analytics based on the acquired technology.

In October, 2007 the Beta version of Microsoft Project Gatineau was released to a limited number of participants.[3][4] In May 2007, Microsoft agreed to purchase the digital marketing solutions parent company, aQuantive, for roughly $6 billion.[5] Microsoft later resold Atlas, a key piece of the aQuantive acquisition, to Facebook in 2013.[6] Microsoft acquired ScreenTonic on May 3, 2007,[7] AdECN on July 26, 2007,[8] and YaData on February 27, 2008 and merged their technologies into adCenter.[9] On February 23, 2009, Publisher Leadership Council was created under the umbrella of Microsoft Advertising.

The council was responsible to deliver the next-generation advertising platform for the publishers of digital media resulting in the formation of Microsoft pubCenter.[10] In January 2010, Microsoft announced a deal in which it would take over the functional operation of Yahoo! Search, and set up a joint venture to sell advertising on both Yahoo! Search and Bing known as the Microsoft Search Alliance.

A complete transition of all Yahoo! sponsored ad clients to Microsoft adCenter occurred in October 2010.[11] On September 10, 2012, adCenter was renamed to Bing Ads, and the Search Alliance was renamed the Yahoo! Bing Network.[12] In April 2015, the Yahoo! partnership was modified; Yahoo! Search will only have to feature Bing results on the "majority" of desktop traffic, leaving the company open to "enhance the search experience" non-exclusively on both desktop and mobile.

Additionally, Microsoft will take over as the exclusive seller of ads delivered through Bing; Yahoo! will sell its own ads through its new in-house Gemini platform.[13][14] On June 29, 2015, AOL Inc.

announced a deal and partnership to take over the majority of Microsoft's ad sales business.

Under the pact, AOL will take over the sale of display, video, and mobile ads on various Microsoft platforms in nine countries, including Brazil, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

As many as 1200 Microsoft employees involved with the business will be transferred to AOL.

In turn, AOL's properties will replace Google Search with Bing, and display Bing Ads sold by Microsoft.[15][16] In May 2018, Bing Ads released additional productivity and time-saving tools for users managing their campaigns via Bing Ads Editor.[17] On April 30, 2019, Bing Ads was re-branded to Microsoft Ads.[18] Similar to Google Ads, Microsoft Ads uses both the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay per click (PPC) on their ad and the advertisement's click-through rate (CTR) to determine how frequently an advertisement is shown.

This system encourages advertisers to write effective ads and to advertise only on searches which are relevant to their advertisement.

Microsoft Ads allows advertisers to target their ads by restricting their ads to a given set of demographics and by increasing their bids whenever the ad is seen by a user of a certain demographic.

As of November 2006, no other PPC advertising system has a similar feature.

Similarly, Microsoft Ads allows advertisers to run their ads on specific days of the week or certain times of day.

Similar to Google Ads Editor, Microsoft Ads provides a desktop tool to manage campaigns offline, called as Microsoft Ads Editor.

Using this editor you can make offline changes to your campaigns and later sync it online.

Microsoft Ads also provides APIs that can be used to manage advertising campaigns.

Yahoo! Gemini

Overture (2001-2003) Yahoo! Search Marketing (2003-2009) Yahoo! Advertising (2009-2014) Yahoo! Gemini (now known as Verizon Media Native, formerly known as Yahoo! Advertising, and Yahoo! Search Marketing) is a keyword-based "Pay per click" or "Sponsored search" Internet advertising service provided by Yahoo.

Yahoo began offering this service after acquiring Overture Services, Inc.

(formerly GoTo.com).

GoTo.com was an Idealab spin off and was the first company to successfully provide a pay-for-placement search service following previous attempts that were not well received.[1][2][3] GoTo.com (not to be confused with Go.com or Go2Net) was an Idealab spin off and was the first company to successfully provide a pay-for-placement search service.[1][2][3] It started off with the purchase of World Wide Web Worm (WWWW), one of the oldest search engines.[4] GoTo.com is considered to have been an influential pioneer of paid search.[5][6] In February 1998, GoTo offered advertisers the option of bidding on how much they would be willing to pay to appear at the top of results in response to specific searches.

The bid amount was paid by the advertiser to GoTo every time a searcher clicked on a link to the advertiser's website.

By July 1998, advertisers were paying anything up to a dollar per click.

In June 1999, GoTo launched a tool set direct traffic centre (dtc) to enable advertisers access to keywords and real time bidding.

GoTo's business model was based on the idea that its paid listings would make it more relevant than other services, especially for general searches, and web sites that pay more are probably better sites.

A similar service had been offered by Open Text in 1996, but this precipitated outcries and bad publicity because searchers at the time did not want the search process more commercialized.

GoTo.com was the 19th most visited website by web traffic as of 1999.[7] In contrast, GoTo's pay-for-placement model was very successful.

Commentors theorised that the web had matured in the intervening two years, and these type of economic models were more acceptable since the web was no longer just a place for academic research, but also a place for buying products.

GoTo founder Bill Gross speculated at the launch that GoTo would succeed because, as a relatively new service, it had no reputation to taint with paid listings, unlike Open Text.

On October 8, 2001, GoTo.com, Inc.

renamed itself Overture Services, Inc.[8] GoTo's chief operating officer Jaynie Studenmund said "We also felt it was a sophisticated enough name, in case our products expand." Through partnerships, Overture enabled portals such as MSN and Yahoo to monetize the hundreds of millions of web searches made each day on their sites.

Indeed, these partnerships proved highly lucrative, and in a period otherwise marked by dot-com failures, Overture became a substantial profit driver for portals like Yahoo[9] This success enabled Overture to acquire web sites such as AltaVista and AlltheWeb.[10] On October 7, 2003, Overture was acquired by its biggest customer, Yahoo!, for $1.63 billion.[11][10] The old brand name of Overture was phased out as Yahoo rebranded many of its products under the Yahoo name.

The exception to this was in Japan and Korea where the local businesses continued to use the Overture brand.

In May 1999, GoTo.com filed a patent application titled "System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine".

The patent was granted as US 6269361 in July 2001.

A related patent has also been granted in Australia and other patent applications remain pending.

Prior to its acquisition by Yahoo, Overture initiated infringement proceedings under this patent against FindWhat.com in January 2002 and Google in April 2002.[12] The lawsuit against Google related to its AdWords service.

In February 2002, Google introduced a service called AdWords Select that allowed marketers to bid for higher placement in marked sections - a tactic that had some similarities to Overture's search-listing auctions.

Following Yahoo's acquisition of Overture, the lawsuit was settled with Google agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of common stock to Yahoo in exchange for a perpetual license.[13] In 2013, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Lens.com, Inc.

v.

1-800 Contacts, Inc.

that online contact lens seller Lens.com did not commit trademark infringement when it purchased Yahoo and Google AdWords search advertisements using competitor 1-800 Contacts' federally registered 1800 CONTACTS trademark as a keyword.

In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging, among other things, that its search advertising trademark enforcement practices have unreasonably restrained competition in violation of the FTC Act.

1-800 Contacts has denied all wrongdoing and was scheduled to appear before an FTC administrative law judge in April 2017.[14] In April 2003, Overture announced a three-year partnership with Gator Corporation, (now Claria Corporation) an adware company.

Under the partnership, Gator's software monitored a web-user's activity on web sites and search engines (even sites such as Google that are not affiliated with Overture) and grabbed search keywords.

These keywords were submitted to the Overture search engine.

As a result, advertisers who paid for listings in Overture found their products advertised through Gator's Search Scout software, even if they wanted nothing to do with Gator.

Overture faced a great deal of criticism for entering into this partnership.[15] When Yahoo acquired Overture, the Claria software impaired the operation of Yahoo's services.

For example, when a user with a Claria application installed used Yahoo Search, they received a standard set of Yahoo results with sponsored listings at the top supplied by Overture.

The user would then receive a full-screen pop-under window from Search Scout.

Since Search Scout uses Overture's paid listings as well, Claria's window has exactly the same listings as the Yahoo search results.[16] Subsequently, Yahoo came out with the Yahoo Toolbar, which allows users to remove adware and spyware from their system.

The toolbar affected the operation of Claria's software and may have put stress on the relationship between the two companies.[17]

Pay for placement

Click-through rate

Click-through rate (CTR) is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement.

It is commonly used to measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns.[1][2] Click-through rates for ad campaigns vary tremendously.

The very first online display ad shown for AT&T on the website HotWired in 1994, had a 44% Click-through rate.[3] With time, the overall rate of user's clicks on webpage banner ads has decreased.

The purpose of Click-through rates is to measure the ratio of clicks to impressions of an online ad or email marketing campaign.

Generally the higher the CTR the more effective the marketing campaign has been at bringing people to a website.[4] Most commercial websites are designed to elicit some sort of action, whether it be to buy a book, read a news article, watch a music video, or search for a flight.

People rarely visit websites with the intention of viewing advertisements, in the same way that few people watch television to view the commercials.[5] While marketers want to know the reaction of the web visitor, with current technology it is nearly impossible to quantify the emotional reaction to the site and the effect of that site on the firm's brand.

However, Click-through rate is an easy piece of data to acquire.

The Click-through rate measures the proportion of visitors who initiated an advertisement that redirected them to another page where they might purchase an item or learn more about a product or service.

Forms of interaction with advertisements other than clicking is possible, but rare; "Click-through rate" is the most commonly used term to describe the efficacy of an advert.[5] The Click-through rate of an advertisement is the number of times a click is made on the ad, divided by the number of times the ad is "served", that is, shown (also called impressions), expressed as a percentage: Click-through rates for banner ads have decreased over time.[6] When banner ads first started to appear, it was not uncommon to have rates above five percent.

They have fallen since then, currently averaging closer to 0.2 or 0.3 percent.[7] In most cases, a 2% Click-through rate would be considered very successful, though the exact number is hotly debated and would vary depending on the situation.

The average Click-through rate of 3% in the 1990s declined to 2.4%–0.4% by 2002.[8] Since advertisers typically pay more for a high Click-through rate, getting many click-throughs with few purchases is undesirable to advertisers.[7] Similarly, by selecting an appropriate advertising site with high affinity (e.g., a movie magazine for a movie advertisement), the same banner can achieve a substantially higher CTR.

Though personalized ads, unusual formats, and more obtrusive ads typically result in higher Click-through rates than standard banner ads, overly intrusive ads are often avoided by viewers.[8][9] Modern online advertising has moved beyond just using banner ads.

Popular search engines allow advertisers to display ads in with the search results triggered by a search user.

These ads are usually in text format and may include additional links and information like phone numbers, addresses and specific product pages.[10] This additional information moves away from the poor user experience that can be created from intrusive banner ads and provides useful information to the search user, resulting in higher Click-through rates for this format of pay-per-click Advertising.

Having high Click-through rate isn't the only goal for an online advertiser, who may develop campaigns to raise awareness for the overall gain of valuable traffic, sacrificing some Click-through rate for that purpose.

Search engine advertising has become a significant element of the Web browsing experience.

Choosing the right ads for the query and the order in which they are displayed greatly affects the probability that a user will see and click on each ad.

This ranking has a strong impact on the revenue the search engine receives from the ads.

Further, showing the user an ad that they prefer to click on improves user satisfaction.

For these reasons, there is an increasing interest in accurately estimating the Click-through rate of ads in a recommender system.[citation needed] An email Click-through rate is defined as the number of recipients who click one or more links in an email and landed on the sender's website, blog, or other desired destination.

More simply, email Click-through rates represent the number of clicks that your email generated.[11][12] Email Click-through rate is expressed as a percentage, and calculated by dividing the number of click throughs by the number of tracked message deliveries.[13] Most email marketers use this metrics along with open rate, bounce rate and other metrics, to understand the effectiveness and success of their email campaign.[14] In general there is no ideal Click-through rate.

This metric can vary based on the type of email sent, how frequently emails are sent, how the list of recipients is segmented, how relevant the content of the email is to the audience, and many other factors.[15] Even time of day can affect Click-through rate.

Sunday appears to generate considerably higher Click-through rates on average when compared to the rest of the week.[16] Every year various types of research studies are conducted to track the overall effectiveness of Click-through rates in email marketing.[17][18] Experts on Search engine optimization (SEO) have claimed since the mid-2010s that Click-through rate has an impact on organic rankings.

Numerous case studies have been published to support this theory.

Proponents supporting this theory often claim that Click-through rate is a ranking signal for Google's RankBrain algorithm.

In a video interview with Dan Petrovic, he states, "There is absolutely no shadow of a doubt that CTR is a ranking signal.

CTR is not only a ranking signal, CTR is essential to Google’s self-analytics."[19] In an article by Neil Patel, Patel quotes Matt Cutts saying, "It doesn’t really matter how often you show up.

It matters how often you get clicked on..." He also cites a study where a 20% increase in Click-through rates resulted in 30% more organic clicks.[20] Opponents of this theory claim Click-through rate has little or no impact on organic rankings.

Bartosz Góralewicz published the results of an experiment on Search Engine Land where he claims, "Despite popular belief, Click-through rate is not a ranking factor.

Even massive organic traffic won’t affect your website’s organic positions."[21] More recently, Barry Schwartz wrote on Search Engine Land, "...Google has said countless times, in writing, at conferences, that CTR is not used in their ranking algorithm."[22]

Online presence management

Online presence management is the process of presenting and drawing traffic to a personal or professional brand online.

This process combines web design and development, blogging, search engine optimization, pay per click marketing, reputation management, directory listings, social media, link sharing, and other avenues to create a long-term positive presence for a person, organization, or product in search engines and on the web in general.

Online presence management is distinct from web presence management in that the former is generally a marketing and messaging discipline while the latter is Governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) discipline.

Due to the evolving nature of Internet use, a web site alone is not sufficient to promote most brands.

To maintain a web presence and brand recognition, individuals and companies need to use a combination of social tools such as Google Maps, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, and Pinterest, as well as cultivating a brand presence on mobile apps and other online databases.

The Online presence management process starts by determining goals that will define an online strategy.

Once this strategy is put in place, an ongoing and constant process of evaluating and fine-tuning is necessary to drive online presence towards the identified goals.[citation needed] An Online presence management strategy has several parts.

Generally these will include search engine placement (making sure the brand appears high in search engine results when the end user has a relevant query), monitoring online discussion around the brand, and analyzing the brand's overall web presence.

Online profile or reputation is a sum of multiple activities and platforms.

It includes following: Online portfolio helps build visibility of a brand or individual.

It works as a centralized hub for all the activities related to the brand and includes, contact info, about the brand (history, vision etc.) and a product showcase.

The Web portfolio ranges in type.

The most common form of portfolio is the website.

A website, usually built on the same domain as the brand's name, represents the business/person throughout the web.

However, there are niche-based portfolio websites too that help brands reach out to a more targeted audience through purpose built features and spot on galleries to brag about their work and achievement.

A blog provides the brand a way to express.

It allows the brand to talk and get their voice/opinion heard on any topic they choose.

Blogging can promote a brand through consistent, interesting content generation associated with a particular brand or the market brand caters to.

Blogs can be created on the website or on third party platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Quora, Wordpress, Blogger.com and Medium, etc.

Apart from conventional blogging, social media enabled Microblogging (through services such as Twitter and Tumblr) is particularly effective in establishing a brand name and build recognition through interaction with masses.

It is also a quick way to respond to brand-related complaints and queries.

Search Engine Optimization is one of the most popular technique to build traction and turn a web page into a revenue generation machine.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO allows companies or individuals to: Search engines use a spider or a crawler to gather listings by automatically "crawling" the web.

The spider follows links to web pages, makes copies of the pages, and stores them in the search engine's index.

Based on this data, the search engines then index the pages and rank the websites accordingly.

Major search engines that index pages using spiders are Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL, and Lycos.

Some methods that help optimize a web page for the search engine include: Internet advertising is a form of broadcasting and promotion of products, ideas, or services using the Internet to attract customers.

Internet advertising has overtaken other traditional advertising media such as newspapers, magazines, and radio.

Internet advertising targets users interested in relevant keywords and displays a text or image ad next to search results or within social media.

Reputation management is the process of tracking actions and opinions, looking for positive and negative reviews that reflect the opinion of the users about any particular service or product, and removing negative opinions (if any) and converting them into positive ones.

It is important, however, not to attack or try to obscure negative opinions through devious means, as this is likely to have an overall negative effect on the brand.

A better strategy is to respond to complaints with information and an apologetic attitude, cultivating later positive reviews.

Social media marketing uses social media platforms to create and foster communities and relationships.

Social media marketing is focused on creating content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share content with their social networks.

Social messages are often effective because they usually come from a trusted, third-party source, rather than the brand itself.

Understanding what tools are available and how to use them effectively is key to success in social media marketing.

Some of these tools include: Many of the tools listed above are often found in a social media management system.

This is a collection of procedures used to manage workflow in a disparate social media environment.

These procedures can be manual or computer-based and enable the manager (or managing team) to listen, aggregate, publish, and manage multiple social media channels from one tool.[1] The common features of a social media management system include access control, content libraries, publishing and scheduling, workflow, aggregation, mention listening, sentiment, analytic and archival functionality.

Jeremiah Owyang is often attributed with defining this term while he was working at Altimeter Group, now part of Prophet.[citation needed]

Cost per mille

Cost per mille (CPM), also called cost per thousand (CPT) (in Latin, French and Italian, mille means one thousand), is a commonly used measurement in advertising.

It is the cost an advertiser pays for one thousand views or clicks of an advertisement.[1] Radio, television, newspaper, magazine, out-of-home advertising, and online advertising can be purchased on the basis of exposing the ad to one thousand viewers or listeners.

It is used in marketing as a benchmarking metric to calculate the relative cost of an advertising campaign or an ad message in a given medium.[2][3] The "cost per thousand advertising impressions" metric (CPM) is calculated by dividing the cost of an advertising placement by the number of impressions (expressed in thousands) that it generates.

CPM is useful for comparing the relative efficiency of various advertising opportunities or media and in evaluating the overall costs of advertising campaigns.[4] For media without countable views, CPM reflects the cost per 1000 estimated views of the ad.

This traditional form of measuring advertising cost can also be used in tandem with performance based models such as percentage of sale, or cost per acquisition (CPA).

The purpose of the CPM metric is to compare the costs of advertising campaigns within and across different media.

A typical advertising campaign might try to reach potential consumers in multiple locations and through various media.

The cost per thousand impressions (CPM) metric enables marketers to make cost comparisons between these media, both at the planning stage and during reviews of past campaigns.[4] Marketers calculate CPM by dividing advertising campaign costs by the number of impressions (or opportunities-to-see) that are delivered by each part of the campaign.

Thus, CPM is the cost of a media campaign, relative to its success in generating impressions to see.

As the impression counts are generally sizeable, marketers customarily work with the CPM impressions.

Dividing by 1,000 is an industry-standard.[4] Similarly, revenue can be expressed in terms of Revenue per mille (RPM).[5] To calculate CPM, marketers first state the results of a media campaign (gross impressions).

Second, they divide that result into the relevant media cost: For example: Note: Notice how the CPM is $6.25 and not $0.00625, this is because we are looking at cost per thousand.

The Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) defines eCPM as: In internet marketing, effective Cost per mille is used to measure the effectiveness of a publisher's inventory being sold (by the publisher) via a CPA, CPC, or Cost per time basis.

In other words, the eCPM tells the publisher what they would have received if they sold the advertising inventory on a CPM basis (instead of a CPA, CPC, or Cost per time).

This information can be used to compare revenue across channels that may have widely varying traffic—by figuring the earnings per thousand impressions.

Example This shows that: CPP is the cost of an advertising campaign, relative to the rating points delivered.

In a manner similar to CPM, cost per point measures the cost per rating point for an advertising campaign by dividing the cost of the advertising by the rating points delivered.[4] The American Marketing Association defines cost-per-rating point (CPR or CPRP) as:

Impression (online media)

An impression (in the context of online advertising) is when an ad is fetched from its source, and is countable.

Whether the ad is clicked is not taken into account.[1] Each time an ad is fetched, it is counted as one impression.[2] Because of the possibility of click fraud, robotic activity is usually filtered and excluded, and a more technical definition is given for accounting purposed by the IAB, a standards and watchdog industry group: "Impression" is a measurement of responses from a Web server to a page request from the user browser, which is filtered from robotic activity and error codes, and is recorded at a point as close as possible to opportunity to see the page by the user.[3][4] Counting impressions is the method by which most Web advertising is accounted and paid for, and the cost is quoted in CPM (cost per thousand impressions) or CPI (cost per impression).

(Contrast CPC, which is the cost per click and not impression-based).

A movement is underway to move from the current standard of served impressions, to a new standard of viewable impressions.[5][6][7] The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) have joined forces in an initiative called 3MS (Making Measurement Make Sense), with the purpose of better defining the value of display media.[8]

AppNexus

AppNexus is an American multinational technology company operating a cloud-based software platform that aims to enable and optimize programmatic online advertising.[1] Headquartered in the Flatiron District of New York City, the company has 23 offices in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

AppNexus offers online auction infrastructure and technology for data management, optimization, financial clearing and support for directly negotiated advertising campaigns.

It has both demand-side platform (DSP) and supply-side platform (SSP) functionalities.

It integrates with advertising sources including Google's DoubleClick, Microsoft's AdECN, engage:BDR and other aggregators.[2][3] It operates out of multiple data centers, including one in Amsterdam serving Europe and the Middle East, in a facility shared with Equinix.[4] In 2016, AppNexus was ranked #21 on Forbes Magazine's "The Cloud 100" list.[5] In June 2018, AT&T announced it was acquiring the company and putting it under its Xandr division as a subsidiary.[6] AppNexus was reportedly sold for $1.6 billion while most news outlets speculated the company did not sell for less than $2 billion.

[7] AppNexus was founded by former Right Media staff, CTO Brian O'Kelley, and Mike Nolet, product manager and director of analytics,[8] with Michael Rubenstein, a former vice president and general manager at Google DoubleClick, who joined AppNexus as president in September 2009.[9] The company was financially backed by Microsoft, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Venrock,[10] Kodiak Venture Partners, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Ron Conway; as of 2015 the company had raised $250 million in financing.

O'Kelley stepped down as CEO in October 2018.[11]

Click fraud

Click fraud is a type of fraud that occurs on the Internet in pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising.

In this type of advertising, the owners of websites that post the ads are paid an amount of money determined by how many visitors to the sites click on the ads.

Fraud occurs when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser, clicking on such an ad without having an actual interest in the target of the ad's link.

Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud.

Media entrepreneur and journalist John Battelle describes Click fraud as the intentionally malicious, "decidedly black hat" practice of publishers gaming paid search advertising by employing robots or low-wage workers to click on ads on their sites repeatedly, thereby generating money to be paid by the advertiser to the publisher and to any agent the advertiser may be using.

PPC advertising is an arrangement in which webmasters (operators of websites), acting as publishers, display clickable links from advertisers in exchange for a charge per click.

As this industry evolved, a number of advertising networks developed, which acted as middlemen between these two groups (publishers and advertisers).

Each time a (believed to be) valid Web user clicks on an ad, the advertiser pays the advertising network, which in turn pays the publisher a share of this money.

This revenue-sharing system is seen as an incentive for Click fraud.

The largest of the advertising networks, Google's AdWords/AdSense and Yahoo! Search Marketing, act in a dual role, since they are also publishers themselves (on their search engines).[1] According to critics, this complex relationship may create a conflict of interest.

This is because these companies lose money to undetected Click fraud when paying out to the publisher but make more money when collecting fees from the advertiser.

Because of the spread between what they collect and pay out, unfettered Click fraud would create short-term profits for these companies.[citation needed] A secondary source of Click fraud is non-contracting parties, who are not part of any pay-per-click agreement.

This type of fraud is even harder to police, because perpetrators generally cannot be sued for breach of contract or charged criminally with fraud.

Examples of non-contracting parties are: Advertising networks may try to stop fraud by all parties but often do not know which clicks are legitimate.

Unlike fraud committed by the publisher, it is difficult to know who should pay when past Click fraud is found.

Publishers resent having to pay refunds for something that is not their fault.

However, advertisers are adamant that they should not have to pay for phony clicks.

Click fraud can be as simple as one person starting a small Web site, becoming a publisher of ads, and clicking on those ads to generate revenue.

Often the number of clicks and their value is so small that the fraud goes undetected.

Publishers may claim that small amounts of such clicking is an accident, which is often the case.[citation needed] Much larger-scale fraud also occurs.[2] Those engaged in large-scale fraud will often run scripts which simulate a human clicking on ads in Web pages.[3] However, huge numbers of clicks appearing to come from just one, or a small number of computers, or a single geographic area, look highly suspicious to the advertising network and advertisers.

Clicks coming from a computer known to be that of a publisher also look suspicious to those watching for Click fraud.

A person attempting large-scale fraud, from one computer, stands a good chance of being caught.

One type of fraud that circumvents detection based on IP patterns uses existing user traffic, turning this into clicks or impressions.[4] Such an attack can be camouflaged from users by using 0-size iframes to display advertisements that are programmatically retrieved using JavaScript.

It could also be camouflaged from advertisers and portals by ensuring that so-called "reverse spiders" are presented with a legitimate page, while human visitors are presented with a page that commits Click fraud.

The use of 0-size iframes and other techniques involving human visitors may also be combined with the use of incentivized traffic, where members of "Paid to Read" (PTR) sites are paid small amounts of money (often a fraction of a cent) to visit a website and/or click on keywords and search results, sometimes hundreds or thousands of times every day[5] Some owners of PTR sites are members of PPC engines and may send many email ads to users who do search, while sending few ads to those who do not.

They do this mainly because the charge per click on search results is often the only source of revenue to the site.

This is known as forced searching, a practice that is frowned upon in the Get Paid To industry.

Organized crime can handle this by having many computers with their own Internet connections in different geographic locations.

Often, scripts fail to mimic true human behavior, so organized crime networks use Trojan code to turn the average person's machines into zombie computers and use sporadic redirects or DNS cache poisoning to turn the oblivious user's actions into actions generating revenue for the scammer.

It can be difficult for advertisers, advertising networks, and authorities to pursue cases against networks of people spread around multiple countries.

Impression fraud is when falsely generated ad impressions affect an advertiser's account.

In the case of click-through rate based auction models, the advertiser may be penalized for having an unacceptably low click-through for a given keyword.

This involves making numerous searches for a keyword without clicking of the ad.

Such ads are disabled[6] automatically, enabling a competitor's lower-bid ad for the same keyword to continue, while several high bidders (on the first page of the search results) have been eliminated.

A hit inflation attack is a kind of fraudulent method used by some advertisement publishers to earn unjustified revenue on the traffic they drive to the advertisers’ Web sites.

It is more sophisticated and harder to detect than a simple inflation attack.

This process involves the collaboration of two counterparts, a dishonest publisher, P, and a dishonest Web site, S.

Web pages on S contain a script that redirects the customer to P's Web site, and this process is hidden from the customer.

So, when user U retrieves a page on S, it would simulate a click or request to a page on P's site.

P's site has two kinds of webpages: a manipulated version, and an original version.

The manipulated version simulates a click or request to the advertisement, causing P to be credited for the click-through.

P selectively determines whether to load the manipulated (and thus fraudulent) script to U's browser by checking if it was from S.

This can be done through the Referrer field, which specifies the site from which the link to P was obtained.

All requests from S will be loaded with the manipulated script, and thus the automatic and hidden request will be sent.[7] This attack will silently convert every innocent visit to S to a click on the advertisement on P's page.

Even worse, P can be in collaboration with several dishonest Web sites, each of which can be in collaboration with several dishonest publishers.

If the advertisement commissioner visits the Web site of P, the non-fraudulent page will be displayed, and thus P cannot be accused of being fraudulent.

Without a reason for suspecting that such collaboration exists, the advertisement commissioner has to inspect all the Internet sites to detect such attacks, which is infeasible.[7] Another proposed method for detection of this type of fraud is through use of association rules.[8] One major factor that affects the ranking of websites in organic search results is the CTR (Click-through Rate).

That is the ratio of clicks to impressions, or in other words how many times a search result is clicked on, as compared to the number of times the listing appears in search results.

In contrast to PPC fraud, where a competitor leverages the services of a botnet, or low cost labour, to generate false clicks, in this case the objective is to beggar thy competitor by making their CTR rate as low as possible, thereby diminishing their ranking factor (position from the top of search results).

Bad actors will therefore generate false clicks on organic search results that they wish to promote, while avoiding search results they wish to demote.

This technique can effectively create a cartel of business services controlled by the same bad actor, or be used to promote a certain political opinion etc.

The scale of this issue is unknown, but is certainly evident to many website developers who pay close attention to the statistics in webmaster tools.

Google Search has been accused of using using so called zero-click search to prevent large part of the traffic leaving its page to third-party publishers.

In 2015 Google introduces Knowledge Graph and Direct Answers feature which consist of a large box on the main results page, with the key information obtained from third-party sources such as Wikipedia, dictionaries, weather websites etc.

As result 71% searches end on the Google search page.

In case of one specific query out of 890'000 searches on Google, only 30'000 resulted in the user clicking on the results website.[9] In 2004, California resident Michael Anthony Bradley created Google Clique, a software program that he claimed could let spammers defraud Google out of millions of dollars in fraudulent clicks, which ultimately led to his arrest and indictment.[17] Bradley used technology that he created for his other companies that took him five years to develop.

Using this technology, he was able to demonstrate that fraud was possible, and was impossible for Google to detect.

Bradley notified Google of this security flaw, and was willing to work with them to close up some of these holes.

However, Bradley was offered $500,000 for his software and technology by some of the world's top spammers.

With this information, Bradley thought he could put a price of $100,000 on his technology, and offered to sell Google all rights to his technology, and they could make the Internet a better and safer place.

When Bradley showed up to Google's offices, he demonstrated the software for them, and when they asked what he wanted, he had stated that he would consult for free if they wanted to purchase the rights to his technology.

He explained the prior offer of $500,000 and said he knew he could get it, but would settle for $100,000 if they wanted to work together.

Bradley returned to Google's offices and was met by United States Secret Service officers who were undercover.

They kept asking him what he wanted, and they even pushed a check for $100,000 to him.

Bradley stated that this felt like blackmail and was not comfortable with this, and pushed the money away.

Just then the Secret Service came in and arrested him.

Authorities said he was arrested while trying to extort $100,000 from Google in exchange for handing over the program.[18] Charges were dropped without explanation on November 22, 2006; both the US Attorney's office and Google declined to comment.

Business Week suggests that Google was unwilling to cooperate with the prosecution, as it would be forced to disclose its Click fraud detection techniques publicly.[19] On June 18, 2016, Fabio Gasperini, an Italian citizen, was extradited to the United States on Click fraud charges.[20] An indictment charged Gasperini with: According to the U.S.

government, Gasperini set up and operated a botnet of over 140,000 computers around the world.

This was the first Click fraud trial in the United States.

If convicted of all counts, Gasperini risked up to 70 years in jail.

Simone Bertollini, an Italian-American lawyer, represented Gasperini at trial.

On August 9, 2017 a jury acquitted Gasperini of all the felony charges of the indictment.

Gasperini was convicted of one misdemeanor count of obtaining information without a financial gain.

Gasperini was sentenced to the statutory maximum of one year imprisonment, a $100,000 fine, and one year of supervised release following incarceration.

Shortly after he was credited with time served and sent back to Italy.

An appeal is currently pending.[21] Proving Click fraud can be very difficult since it is hard to know who is behind a computer and what their intentions are.

When it comes to mobile ad fraud detection, data analysis can give some reliable indications.

Abnormal metrics can hint at the presence of different types of frauds.

To detect Click fraud in the ad campaign, advertisers can focus on the following attribution points[22] Often the best an advertising network can do is to identify which clicks are most likely fraudulent and not charge the account of the advertiser.

Even more sophisticated means of detection are used,[23] but none are foolproof.

The Tuzhilin Report[24] produced as part of a Click fraud lawsuit settlement, has a detailed and comprehensive discussion of these issues.

In particular, it defines "the Fundamental Problem of invalid (fraudulent) clicks": The PPC industry is lobbying for tighter laws on the issue.

Many hope to have laws that will cover those not bound by contracts.

A number of companies are developing viable solutions for Click fraud identification and are developing intermediary relationships with advertising networks.

Such solutions fall into two categories: In a 2007 interview in Forbes, Google Click fraud czar Shuman Ghosemajumder said that one of the key challenges in Click fraud detection by third-parties was access to data beyond clicks, notably, ad impression data.[25] Click fraud is less likely in cost per action models.

The fact that the middlemen (search engines) have the upper hand in the operational definition of invalid clicks is the reason for the conflict of interest between advertisers and the middlemen, as described above.

This is manifested in the Tuzhilin Report[24] as described above.

The Tuzhilin report did not publicly define invalid clicks and did not describe the operational definitions in detail.

Rather, it gave a high-level picture of the fraud-detection system and argued that the operational definition of the search engine under investigations is "reasonable".

One aim of the report was to preserve the privacy of the fraud-detection system in order to maintain its effectiveness.

This prompted some researchers to conduct public research on how the middlemen can fight Click fraud.[26] Since such research is presumably not tainted by market forces, there is hope that this research can be adopted to assess how rigorous a middleman is in detecting Click fraud in future law cases.

The fear that this research can expose the internal fraud-detection system of middlemen still applies.

An example of such research is that done by Metwally, Agrawal and El Abbadi at UCSB.

Other work by Majumdar, Kulkarni, and Ravishankar at UC Riverside proposes protocols for the identification of fraudulent behavior by brokers and other intermediaries in content-delivery networks.

Sophie Newton

Sophie Newton is the Chief Operating Officer at Brainlabs Digital, an award-winning pay-per-click marketing agency.

She is committed to improve the representation of women in technology.

Newton attended South Hampstead High School, which she says helped to shape her career in technology.[1] "South Hampstead gave me the confidence to fight for what I believe in and showed me how rewarding it is to work on something that I am passionate about".[2] She completed a master's degree in Mathematics at the University of Oxford in 2011, where she finished top of the year.[3] Newton was awarded Oxford's Gibbs Mathematics Prize.[4][5] Newton is related to Albert Einstein.[6] She is an Arsenal fan, and worked briefly in fashion before becoming director of Brainlabs.[7] Brainlabs Digital are focused on the use of data and statistics to scientifically optimise web businesses.[2] Newton joined Brainlabs in 2013 and has since been personally responsible for £4 million of new business.[1] Since Newton became director she has designed training programmes for new staff and built new technology, picking up 11 industry awards.[8] Newton notes that despite the data-driven environment, it is essential to have a creative, collaborative mindset.[9] In 2015 Brainlabs won three awards at the UK Search Awards: Best Local Campaign, Best PPC Campaign and Best Large PPC Agency.[10] In 2016 Brainlabs Digital won Agency of the Year and the Direct & Digital Marketing Award from The Masters of Marketing.[11] In 2017 Brainlabs was listed first on Deloitte Tech Tack's Fast 50 for UK companies, and 4th in the Financial Times' 1000 Fastest Growing Companies in Europe.[12][13] Brainlabs are renowned for challenging the toxic culture of technology.[14] When Newton joined Brainlabs Digital, she analysed pay across all staff and found an average difference of 8.6% between men and women's salaries.[15] After consulting her team, Newton decided to increase women's salaries by 8.6%, a "pay gap tax" that has resulted in Brainlabs boasting 50:50 men and women employees.[16] She is recognised as being a leader in work-place equality.[17][18] In 2016 Newton won the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising Women of Tomorrow Award.[19][8] In 2017 she won the FDM Everywoman in Tech Inspiration Award.[20][21]

Online advertising

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers.

Many consumers find Online advertising disruptive[1] and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons.

When software is used to do the purchasing, it is known as programmatic advertising.

Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising.

Like other advertising media, Online advertising frequently involves a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content.

Other potential participants include advertising agencies who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser.

In 2016, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and broadcast television.[2]:14 In 2017, Internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled $83.0 billion, a 14% increase over the $72.50 billion in revenues in 2016.[3] Many common Online advertising practices are controversial and, as a result, have been increasingly subject to regulation.

Online ad revenues also may not adequately replace other publishers' revenue streams.

Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to place their content behind paywalls.[4] In early days of the Internet, Online advertising was mostly prohibited.

For example, two of the predecessor networks to the Internet, ARPANET and NSFNet, had "acceptable use policies" that banned network "use for commercial activities by for-profit institutions".[5][6] The NSFNet began phasing out its commercial use ban in 1991.[7][8][9][10] The first widely publicized example of Online advertising was conducted via electronic mail.

On 3 May 1978, a marketer from DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Gary Thuerk, sent an email to most of the ARPANET's American west coast users, advertising an open house for a new model of a DEC computer.[6][11] Despite the prevailing acceptable use policies, electronic mail marketing rapidly expanded[12] and eventually became known as "spam." The first known large-scale non-commercial spam message was sent on 18 January 1994 by an Andrews University system administrator, by cross-posting a religious message to all USENET newsgroups.[13] In January 1994 Mark Eberra started the first email marketing company for opt in email list under the domain Insideconnect.com.

He also started the Direct Email Marketing Association to help stop unwanted email and prevent spam.

[14] [15] Four months later, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, partners in a law firm, broadly promoted their legal services in a USENET posting titled "Green Card Lottery – Final One?"[16] Canter and Siegel's Green Card USENET spam raised the profile of Online advertising, stimulating widespread interest in advertising via both Usenet and traditional email.[13] More recently, spam has evolved into a more industrial operation, where spammers use armies of virus-infected computers (botnets) to send spam remotely.[11] Online banner advertising began in the early 1990s as page owners sought additional revenue streams to support their content.

Commercial online service Prodigy displayed banners at the bottom of the screen to promote Sears products.

The first clickable web ad was sold by Global Network Navigator in 1993 to a Silicon Valley law firm.[17] In 1994, web banner advertising became mainstream when HotWired, the online component of Wired Magazine, and Time Warner's Pathfinder (website)[18] sold banner ads to AT&T and other companies.

The first AT&T ad on HotWired had a 44% click-through rate, and instead of directing clickers to AT&T's website, the ad linked to an online tour of seven of the world's most acclaimed art museums.[19][20] GoTo.com (renamed Overture in 2001, and acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) created the first search advertising keyword auction in 1998.[21]:119 Google launched its "AdWords" (now renamed Google Ads) search advertising program in 2000[22] and introduced quality-based ranking allocation in 2002,[23] which sorts search advertisements by a combination of bid price and searchers' likeliness to click on the ads.[21]:123 More recently, companies have sought to merge their advertising messages into editorial content or valuable services.

Examples include Red Bull's Red Bull Media House streaming Felix Baumgartner's jump from space online, Coca-Cola's online magazines, and Nike's free applications for performance tracking.[20] Advertisers are also embracing social media[24][25] and mobile advertising; mobile ad spending has grown 90% each year from 2010 to 2013.[26]:13 According to Ad Age Datacenter analysis, in 2017 over half of agency revenue came from digital work.[27] Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics.

Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect.

Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers) often use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer.

Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited.[28] As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user's online activity, they can create a detailed profile of the user's interests to deliver even more targeted advertising.

This aggregation of data is called behavioral targeting.[29] Advertisers can also target their audience by using contextual to deliver display ads related to the content of the web page where the ads appear.[21]:118 Retargeting, behavioral targeting, and contextual advertising all are designed to increase an advertiser's return on investment, or ROI, over untargeted ads.[30] Advertisers may also deliver ads based on a user's suspected geography through geotargeting.

A user's IP address communicates some geographic information (at minimum, the user's country or general region).

The geographic information from an IP can be supplemented and refined with other proxies or information to narrow the range of possible locations.[31] For example, with mobile devices, advertisers can sometimes use a phone's GPS receiver or the location of nearby mobile towers.[32] Cookies and other persistent data on a user's machine may provide help narrowing a user's location further.[31] Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page.

Many banner ads are delivered by a central ad server.

Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs.

Frame ads were the first form of web banners.[19] The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers to traditional frame ads.

Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau's Ad Unit Guidelines proposes standardized pixel dimensions for ad units.[33] A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's initial browser window.[34] A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's initial browser window.[26]:22 Pop-under ads and similar technologies are now advised against by online authorities such as Google, who state that they "do not condone this practice".[35] A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website's content.

Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a pre-set time period.

An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the user's mouse movement over the ad.[36] Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space.

A trick banner is a banner ad where the ad copy imitates some screen element users commonly encounter, such as an operating system message or popular application message, to induce ad clicks.[37] Trick banners typically do not mention the advertiser in the initial ad, and thus they are a form of bait-and-switch.[38][39] Trick banners commonly attract a higher-than-average click-through rate, but tricked users may resent the advertiser for deceiving them.[40] "News Feed Ads", also called "Sponsored Stories", "Boosted Posts", typically exist on social media platforms that offer a steady stream of information updates ("news feed"[41]) in regulated formats (i.e.

in similar sized small boxes with a uniform style).

Those advertisements are intertwined with non-promoted news that the users are reading through.

Those advertisements can be of any content, such as promoting a website, a fan page, an app, or a product.

Some examples are: Facebook's "Sponsored Stories",[42] LinkedIn's "Sponsored Updates",[43] and Twitter's "Promoted Tweets".[44] This display ads format falls into its own category because unlike banner ads which are quite distinguishable, News Feed Ads' format blends well into non-paid news updates.

This format of online advertisement yields much higher click-through rates than traditional display ads.[45][46] The process by which Online advertising is displayed can involve many parties.

In the simplest case, the website publisher selects and serves the ads.

Publishers which operate their own advertising departments may use this method.

The ads may be outsourced to an advertising agency under contract with the publisher, and served from the advertising agency's servers.

Alternatively, ad space may be offered for sale in a bidding market using an ad exchange and real-time bidding.

This involves many parties interacting automatically in real time.

In response to a request from the user's browser, the publisher content server sends the web page content to the user's browser over the Internet.

The page does not yet contain ads, but contains links which cause the user's browser to connect to the publisher ad server to request that the spaces left for ads be filled in with ads.

Information identifying the user, such as cookies and the page being viewed, is transmitted to the publisher ad server.

The publisher ad server then communicates with a supply-side platform server.

The publisher is offering ad space for sale, so they are considered the supplier.

The supply side platform also receives the user's identifying information, which it sends to a data management platform.

At the data management platform, the user's identifying information is used to look up demographic information, previous purchases, and other information of interest to advertisers.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of data obtained through such a data management platform: This customer information is combined and returned to the supply side platform, which can now package up the offer of ad space along with information about the user who will view it.

The supply side platform sends that offer to an ad exchange.

The ad exchange puts the offer out for bid to demand-side platforms.

Demand side platforms act on behalf of ad agencies, who sell ads which advertise brands.

Demand side platforms thus have ads ready to display, and are searching for users to view them.

Bidders get the information about the user ready to view the ad, and decide, based on that information, how much to offer to buy the ad space.

According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, a demand side platform has 10 milliseconds to respond to an offer.

The ad exchange picks the winning bid and informs both parties.

The ad exchange then passes the link to the ad back through the supply side platform and the publisher's ad server to the user's browser, which then requests the ad content from the agency's ad server.

The ad agency can thus confirm that the ad was delivered to the browser.[49] This is simplified, according to the IAB.

Exchanges may try to unload unsold ("remnant") space at low prices through other exchanges.

Some agencies maintain semi-permanent pre-cached bids with ad exchanges, and those may be examined before going out to additional demand side platforms for bids.

The process for mobile advertising is different and may involve mobile carriers and handset software manufacturers.[49] An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content, sometimes while the user is waiting for the content to load.[50] Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing.[51][52] A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks.

Text-based ads may display separately from a web page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyperlinking individual words or phrases to the advertiser's websites.

Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text message marketing.

Text-based ads often render faster than graphical ads and can be harder for ad-blocking software to block.[53] Search engine marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Search engines provide sponsored results and organic (non-sponsored) results based on a web searcher's query.[21]:117 Search engines often employ visual cues to differentiate sponsored results from organic results.

Search engine marketing includes all of an advertiser's actions to make a website's listing more prominent for topical keywords.

The primary reason behind the rising popularity of Search Engine Marketing has been Google.

There were a few companies that had its own PPC and Analytics tools.

However, this concept was popularized by Google.

Google Ad words was convenient for advertisers to use and create campaigns.

And, they realized that the tool did a fair job, by charging only for someone's click on the ad, which reported as the cost-per-click for which a penny was charged.

This resulted in the advertisers monitoring the campaign by the number of clicks and were satisfied that the ads could be tracked.[54] Search engine optimization, or SEO, attempts to improve a website's organic search rankings in SERPs by increasing the website content's relevance to search terms.

Search engines regularly update their algorithms to penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings, making optimization a moving target for advertisers.[55][56] Many vendors offer SEO services.[26]:22 Sponsored search (also called sponsored links, search ads, or paid search) allows advertisers to be included in the sponsored results of a search for selected keywords.

Search ads are often sold via real-time auctions, where advertisers bid on keywords.[21]:118[57] In addition to setting a maximum price per keyword, bids may include time, language, geographical, and other constraints.[21]:118 Search engines originally sold listings in order of highest bids.[21]:119 Modern search engines rank sponsored listings based on a combination of bid price, expected click-through rate, keyword relevancy and site quality.[23] Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social media websites.

Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles.Videos, interactive quizzes, and sponsored posts are all a part of this operation.

Usually these ads are found on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.[58] Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smartphones, feature phones, or tablet computers.

Mobile advertising may take the form of static or rich media display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile applications or games (such as interstitial ads, "advergaming," or application sponsorship).[26]:23 Industry groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association have attempted to standardize mobile ad unit specifications, similar to the IAB's efforts for general Online advertising.[52] Mobile advertising is growing rapidly for several reasons.

There are more mobile devices in the field, connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows for richer media ads to be served quickly), screen resolutions have advanced, mobile publishers are becoming more sophisticated about incorporating ads, and consumers are using mobile devices more extensively.[26]:14 The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts continued growth in mobile advertising with the adoption of location-based targeting and other technological features not available or relevant on personal computers.[26]:14 In July 2014 Facebook reported advertising revenue for the June 2014 quarter of $2.68 billion, an increase of 67 percent over the second quarter of 2013.

Of that, mobile advertising revenue accounted for around 62 percent, an increase of 41 percent on the previous year.

Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message.[26]:22 Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may give the recipient an option to opt out of future emails, or it may be sent with the recipient's prior consent (opt-in).

Businesses may ask for your email and send updates on new products or sales.

As opposed to static messaging, chat advertising refers to real-time messages dropped to users on certain sites.

This is done using live chat software or tracking applications installed within certain websites with the operating personnel behind the site often dropping adverts on the traffic surfing around the sites.

In reality, this is a subset of the email advertising but different because of its time window.

Online classified advertising is advertising posted online in a categorical listing of specific products or services.

Examples include online job boards, online real estate listings, automotive listings, online yellow pages, and online auction-based listings.[26]:22 Craigslist and eBay are two prominent providers of online classified listings.

Adware is software that, once installed, automatically displays advertisements on a user's computer.

The ads may appear in the software itself, integrated into web pages visited by the user, or in pop-ups/pop-unders.[59] Adware installed without the user's permission is a type of malware.[60] Affiliate marketing occurs when advertisers organize third parties to generate potential customers for them.

Third-party affiliates receive payment based on sales generated through their promotion.[26]:22 Affiliate marketers generate traffic to offers from affiliate networks, and when the desired action is taken by the visitor, the affiliate earns a commission.

These desired actions can be an email submission, a phone call, filling out an online form, or an online order being completed.

Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers.

This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including blogs, news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides and more.

Considering that most marketing involves some form of published media, it is almost (though not entirely) redundant to call 'content marketing' anything other than simply 'marketing'.

There are, of course, other forms of marketing (in-person marketing, telephone-based marketing, word of mouth marketing, etc.) where the label is more useful for identifying the type of marketing.

However, even these are usually merely presenting content that they are marketing as information in a way that is different from traditional print, radio, TV, film, email, or web media.

Online marketing platform (OMP) is an integrated web-based platform that combines the benefits of a business directory, local search engine, search engine optimisation (SEO) tool, customer relationship management (CRM) package and content management system (CMS).

eBay and Amazon are used as online marketing and logistics management platforms.

On Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other Social Media, retail online marketing is also used.

Online business marketing platforms such as Marketo, MarketBright and Pardot have been bought by major IT companies (Eloqua-Oracle, Neolane-Adobe and Unica-IBM).

Unlike television marketing in which Neilsen TV Ratings can be relied upon for viewing metrics, online advertisers do not have an independent party to verify viewing claims made by the big online platforms.[61] Advertisers and publishers use a wide range of payment calculation methods.

In 2012, advertisers calculated 32% of Online advertising transactions on a cost-per-impression basis, 66% on customer performance (e.g.

cost per click or cost per acquisition), and 2% on hybrids of impression and performance methods.[26]:17 Cost per mille, often abbreviated to CPM, means that advertisers pay for every thousand displays of their message to potential customers (mille is the Latin word for thousand).

In the online context, ad displays are usually called "impressions." Definitions of an "impression" vary among publishers,[62] and some impressions may not be charged because they don't represent a new exposure to an actual customer.

Advertisers can use technologies such as web bugs to verify if an impression is actually delivered.[63][64]:59 Similarly, revenue generated can be measured in Revenue per mille (RPM).[65] Publishers use a variety of techniques to increase page views, such as dividing content across multiple pages, repurposing someone else's content, using sensational titles, or publishing tabloid or sexual content.[66] CPM advertising is susceptible to "impression fraud," and advertisers who want visitors to their sites may not find per-impression payments a good proxy for the results they desire.[67]:1–4 CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) means advertisers pay each time a user clicks on the ad.

CPC advertising works well when advertisers want visitors to their sites, but it's a less accurate measurement for advertisers looking to build brand awareness.[68] CPC's market share has grown each year since its introduction, eclipsing CPM to dominate two-thirds of all Online advertising compensation methods.[26]:18[67]:1 Like impressions, not all recorded clicks are valuable to advertisers.

GoldSpot Media reported that up to 50% of clicks on static mobile banner ads are accidental and resulted in redirected visitors leaving the new site immediately.[69] Cost per engagement aims to track not just that an ad unit loaded on the page (i.e., an impression was served), but also that the viewer actually saw and/or interacted with the ad.[70][71] Cost per view video advertising.

Both Google and TubeMogul endorsed this standardized CPV metric to the IAB's (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Digital Video Committee, and it's garnering a notable amount of industry support.[72] CPV is the primary benchmark used in YouTube Advertising Campaigns, as part of Google's AdWords platform.

The CPI compensation method is specific to mobile applications and mobile advertising.

In CPI ad campaigns brands are charged a fixed of bid rate only when the application was installed.

In marketing, "attribution" is the measurement of effectiveness of particular ads in a consumer's ultimate decision to purchase.

Multiple ad impressions may lead to a consumer "click" or other action.

A single action may lead to revenue being paid to multiple ad space sellers.[73] CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) or PPP (Pay Per Performance) advertising means the advertiser pays for the number of users who perform a desired activity, such as completing a purchase or filling out a registration form.

Performance-based compensation can also incorporate revenue sharing, where publishers earn a percentage of the advertiser's profits made as a result of the ad.

Performance-based compensation shifts the risk of failed advertising onto publishers.[67]:4, 16 Fixed cost compensation means advertisers pay a fixed cost for delivery of ads online, usually over a specified time period, irrespective of the ad's visibility or users' response to it.

One examples is CPD (cost per day) where advertisers pay a fixed cost for publishing an ad for a day irrespective of impressions served or clicks.

The low costs of electronic communication reduce the cost of displaying online advertisements compared to offline ads.

Online advertising, and in particular social media, provides a low-cost means for advertisers to engage with large established communities.[58] Advertising online offers better returns than in other media.[67]:1 Online advertisers can collect data on their ads' effectiveness, such as the size of the potential audience or actual audience response,[21]:119 how a visitor reached their advertisement, whether the advertisement resulted in a sale, and whether an ad actually loaded within a visitor's view.[63][64]:59 This helps online advertisers improve their ad campaigns over time.

Advertisers have a wide variety of ways of presenting their promotional messages, including the ability to convey images, video, audio, and links.

Unlike many offline ads, online ads also can be interactive.[20] For example, some ads let users input queries[74] or let users follow the advertiser on social media.[75] Online ads can even incorporate games.[76] Publishers can offer advertisers the ability to reach customizable and narrow market segments for targeted advertising.

Online advertising may use geo-targeting to display relevant advertisements to the user's geography.

Advertisers can customize each individual ad to a particular user based on the user's previous preferences.[30] Advertisers can also track whether a visitor has already seen a particular ad in order to reduce unwanted repetitious exposures and provide adequate time gaps between exposures.[77] Online advertising can reach nearly every global market, and Online advertising influences offline sales.[78][79][80] Once ad design is complete, online ads can be deployed immediately.

The delivery of online ads does not need to be linked to the publisher's publication schedule.

Furthermore, online advertisers can modify or replace ad copy more rapidly than their offline counterparts.[81] According to a US Senate investigation, the current state of Online advertising endangers the security and privacy of users.[82] Eye-tracking studies have shown that Internet users often ignore web page zones likely to contain display ads (sometimes called "banner blindness"), and this problem is worse online than in offline media.[83] On the other hand, studies suggest that even those ads "ignored" by the users may influence the user subconsciously.[84] There are numerous ways that advertisers can be overcharged for their advertising.

For example, click fraud occurs when a publisher or third parties click (manually or through automated means) on a CPC ad with no legitimate buying intent.[85] For example, click fraud can occur when a competitor clicks on ads to deplete its rival's advertising budget, or when publishers attempt to manufacture revenue.[85] Click fraud is especially associated with pornography sites.

In 2011, certain scamming porn websites launched dozens of hidden pages on each visitor's computer, forcing the visitor's computer to click on hundreds of paid links without the visitor's knowledge.[86] As with offline publications, online impression fraud can occur when publishers overstate the number of ad impressions they have delivered to their advertisers.

To combat impression fraud, several publishing and advertising industry associations are developing ways to count online impressions credibly.[87][88] Because users have different operating systems, web browsers[89] and computer hardware (including mobile devices and different screen sizes), online ads may appear to users differently from how the advertiser intended, or the ads may not display properly at all.

A 2012 comScore study revealed that, on average, 31% of ads were not "in-view" when rendered, meaning they never had an opportunity to be seen.[90] Rich media ads create even greater compatibility problems, as some developers may use competing (and exclusive) software to render the ads (see e.g.

Comparison of HTML 5 and Flash).

Furthermore, advertisers may encounter legal problems if legally required information doesn't actually display to users, even if that failure is due to technological heterogeneity.[91]:i In the United States, the FTC has released a set of guidelines indicating that it's the advertisers' responsibility to ensure the ads display any required disclosures or disclaimers, irrespective of the users' technology.[91]:4–8 Ad blocking, or ad filtering, means the ads do not appear to the user because the user uses technology to screen out ads.

Many browsers block unsolicited pop-up ads by default.[92] Other software programs or browser add-ons may also block the loading of ads, or block elements on a page with behaviors characteristic of ads (e.g.

HTML autoplay of both audio and video).

Approximately 9% of all online page views come from browsers with ad-blocking software installed,[93] and some publishers have 40%+ of their visitors using ad-blockers.[4] Some web browsers offer privacy modes where users can hide information about themselves from publishers and advertisers.

Among other consequences, advertisers can't use cookies to serve targeted ads to private browsers.

Most major browsers have incorporated Do Not Track options into their browser headers, but the regulations currently are only enforced by the honor system.[94][95][96] The collection of user information by publishers and advertisers has raised consumer concerns about their privacy.[31][64] Sixty percent of Internet users would use Do Not Track technology to block all collection of information if given an opportunity.[97][98] Over half of all Google and Facebook users are concerned about their privacy when using Google and Facebook, according to Gallup.[99] Many consumers have reservations about online behavioral targeting.

By tracking users' online activities, advertisers are able to understand consumers quite well.

Advertisers often use technology, such as web bugs and respawning cookies, to maximize their abilities to track consumers.[64]:60[100] According to a 2011 survey conducted by Harris Interactive, over half of Internet users had a negative impression of online behavioral advertising, and forty percent feared that their personally-identifiable information had been shared with advertisers without their consent.[101][102] Consumers can be especially troubled by advertisers targeting them based on sensitive information, such as financial or health status.[100] Furthermore, some advertisers attach the MAC address of users' devices to their 'demographic profiles' so they can be retargeted (regardless of the accuracy of the profile) even if the user clears their cookies and browsing history.[citation needed] Scammers can take advantage of consumers' difficulties verifying an online persona's identity,[103]:1 leading to artifices like phishing (where scam emails look identical to those from a well-known brand owner)[104] and confidence schemes like the Nigerian "419" scam.[105][106][107] The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 289,874 complaints in 2012, totaling over half a billion dollars in losses, most of which originated with scam ads.[108][109] Consumers also face malware risks, i.e.

malvertising, when interacting with Online advertising.

Cisco's 2013 Annual Security Report revealed that clicking on ads was 182 times more likely to install a virus on a user's computer than surfing the Internet for porn.[110][111] For example, in August 2014 Yahoo's advertising network reportedly saw cases of infection of a variant of Cryptolocker ransomware.[112] The Internet's low cost of disseminating advertising contributes to spam, especially by large-scale spammers.

Numerous efforts have been undertaken to combat spam, ranging from blacklists to regulatorily-required labeling to content filters, but most of those efforts have adverse collateral effects, such as mistaken filtering.[6] In general, consumer protection laws apply equally to online and offline activities.[91]:i However, there are questions over which jurisdiction's laws apply and which regulatory agencies have enforcement authority over transborder activity.[113] As with offline advertising, industry participants have undertaken numerous efforts to self-regulate and develop industry standards or codes of conduct.

Several United States advertising industry organizations jointly published Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising based on standards proposed by the FTC in 2009.[114] European ad associations published a similar document in 2011.[115] Primary tenets of both documents include consumer control of data transfer to third parties, data security, and consent for collection of certain health and financial data.[114]:2–4 Neither framework, however, penalizes violators of the codes of conduct.[116] Privacy regulation can require users' consent before an advertiser can track the user or communicate with the user.

However, affirmative consent ("opt in") can be difficult and expensive to obtain.[64]:60 Industry participants often prefer other regulatory schemes.

Different jurisdictions have taken different approaches to privacy issues with advertising.

The United States has specific restrictions on online tracking of children in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA),[114]:16–17 and the FTC has recently expanded its interpretation of COPPA to include requiring ad networks to obtain parental consent before knowingly tracking kids.[117] Otherwise, the U.S.

Federal Trade Commission frequently supports industry self-regulation, although increasingly it has been undertaking enforcement actions related to online privacy and security.[118] The FTC has also been pushing for industry consensus about possible Do Not Track legislation.

In contrast, the European Union's "Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive" restricts websites' ability to use consumer data much more comprehensively.

The EU limitations restrict targeting by online advertisers; researchers have estimated Online advertising effectiveness decreases on average by around 65% in Europe relative to the rest of the world.[64]:58 Many laws specifically regulate the ways online ads are delivered.

For example, Online advertising delivered via email is more regulated than the same ad content delivered via banner ads.

Among other restrictions, the U.S.

CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires that any commercial email provide an opt-out mechanism.[113] Similarly, mobile advertising is governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), which (among other restrictions) requires user opt-in before sending advertising via text messaging.

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