Week 3: Popular forms of online advertising and promotion

After studying the "most effective" way to set up AdWords - I conducted a search using the term "wood name puzzles" .5 of 8 of the sidebar listings had "wood(en) name puzzle(s)" in the title line.  There was one listing for a local business that had no mention of wood name puzzles what so ever.

• Listing #1 - all keyword(s) headline - went to an appropriate landing page - (one click)

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• Listing #2 - 2 keyword(s) headline - went to an appropriate landing page (one click)

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• Listing #3 - all keyword(s) headline - went to a directory site (Shopping.com - an eBay offshoot) where I had multiple listings to choose from - formatted similarly to the Google AdWords ads (two clicks)

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• Listing #4 - 1 keyword headline - took me to a directory page with no mention of wood name puzzles (unknown number of clicks - didn't see what I wanted - moved on)

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• Listing #5 - all keyword(s) headline - took me to another directory page I had to scroll down a way to find a thumbnail that would take me to an appropriate landing page - (two clicks)

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• Listing #6 - all keyword(s) headline - took me to BizRate, another directory service .... (two clicks)

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• Listing #7 - no keywords headline - local business - must have been a geographical listing - but no puzzles

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• Listing #8 - all keyword(s) headline + one word - went to an appropriate landing page (which was also the landing page of the top listing at both Shopping.com and BizRate) - (one click)

The directory sites all offered 2 or more clicks - but they were set up with another layer of CPC for the merchants.  I thought it would be interesting to know how this is actually achieved - if they are selling actual CPC or selling as content site links/impressions.

 Shopping.com is a CPC program. You do not openly bid on a price but on a set range of prices depending on the category that your product is in. The minimum CPC gets you a basic ad and the higher rate gets you higher placement along with other link enhancements (color, font, etc).  It seems like this would be more of a sure thing in terms of ad placement - Google places their ads dependent upon the relevancy of your keywords for that particular day.  At Shopping.com - you pay for a listing and you are listed - the more you pay the higher you are listed, but (unless you run out of funds - which you can also control with a specific funding arrangement called Always On) your ad will always be visible.

 At BizRate (now Shopzilla) they offer a CPC program, but they also use a customer rating program where the merchant must collect a specific number of customers’ ratings to "Customer Certified" and qualify for their "Smiley" ranking system. The ratings system seems to be free but I could not find a FAQ page or much ore information.

Sandra C Asher