Pay per click (PPC) is a search engine marketing technique and a great way to bring quality web traffic to your site. It is an advertising model where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser’s website. This can be either a text or banner ad and is used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines. An advertiser will use platforms such as Google Adwords and Microsoft Adcenter to run traffic to their selected list of keywords in which they bid a Max CPC (Cost Per Click).  When a user types a keyword query that matches one from the advertiser’s keyword list, the advertiser’s ad may appear on the search results page depending on how competitively they are bidding on their keywords. These ads that appear on the search results page are called “sponsored links” or “sponsored ads” and usually appear next to or above the organic results.

When it comes to the realm of PPC (pay per click) advertising, there are options other than Google. Popular secondary options include Facebook, Yahoo!/Bing, Adbrite, and Advertise.com.

Facebook –  Facebook’s PPC program is known to have great targeting options because of the data they have on their users; Age, gender, marital status, past and current employment history, connections, business/books/movies they like, etc.
Pricing model, both CPC and CPM.

Yahoo!/Bing – Reach 162 million potential users on both Yahoo! and Bing through only one account.  The platform (Microsoft AdCenter) has the ability to transfer any of your current Google search campaigns.

Adbrite – Adbrite is a large ad exchange platform that places your ad across many different advertising networks.  You have the ability of opening up to all networks or you can just run on a specific category of sites (i.e.- Technology). Adbrite offers complete transparency and provides a list of sites where your ad has appeared.  This allows you to optimize on a site level.

Advertise.com – Advertise.com is a very user friendly platform that has highly sophisticated keyword targeting capabilites.  Your ads are served across numerous advertising networks to people who are actively looking for the product/service being advertised. They also have a dedicated support team that are very helpful and always willing to give tips on how to improve campaign performance.