PPC Ads… I’m sure you must have heard about this term all over the internet and the digital marketing verse.

Pay Per Click Advertisement, a new form of inexpensively advertising and marketing your products and services, but ever wondered how many different kinds of Pay Per Click Ads are there, how one may differentiate between them and which one of these is best suited to your business offerings?

Well… you’re in luck today, here is all the information one may want explore while employing a PPC campaign for their business, in just under a few minutes.

Well firstly, I’d like to point out there are most definitely different types of PPC Ads and as the name suggests you only pay for these ads when someone clicks on them, quite simple isn’t it… well let’s explore then.

Each and every one of them has a different cost structure associated with them, and it doesn’t always mean the more expensive the Ad Campaign the better the result it generates. This Statement is completely hypothetical in terms of what kind of business offerings one may want to promote through them.

Seems quite straightforward right… no it doesn’t?

Well don’t worry I’m here to sort out all your queries, and also that’s precisely the motive of me writing this blog!

Before getting into the much awaited details just wanted to give you a gist of why PPC Ads are gaining such popularity in today’s business scenario. Unlike other advertising campaigns a PPC Advertising Campaign gives a real time analysis of its performance, one can directly measure the results of the campaign and get a much wider outlook on their ROAS (Return on Ad Spending), with innumerable matrices to compare from.

Different types of PPC Ads are as follows with their own unique capabilities and shortcomings,

1. Search Ads – These are  the ads which often appear on a search engine ranking page (SERP) results, such as Google and Bing, when one might search for a particular product or service. These ads are quite expensive since not only their reach is quite vast and more direct than other types of PPC Ads, but can only be procured through a process of auction. Individual business owners enter an auction battle for some particularly relevant keywords and compete against their competitors and the search engine often displays the URL with the maximum quotation bid amount. Search Ads can be a great avenue to promote or launch new SAAS (Software as a Service) systems, IT Solutions, Telecommunication or Call Centre Solutions, etc.
2. Display Ads – Display Ads are a little different from search ads in a way that instead of targeting keywords you can directly target a group customer on the basis of their demographic factors and directly post your ads on search engine affiliated websites rather than in the search engine results itself, Affiliate Marketing may also fall under this category. Such ads can be highly effective for brand awareness purposes.
3. Social Advertising – Social or Social Media Advertising is one another avenue which has been gaining quite a bit of popularity since its inception. Innumerable people use social media on a daily basis and lots of brands have realised the opportunities it presents to promote and broadcast their offerings to a much larger target audience. Social Media websites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. are just a few top rated websites for social adverts, where demographic and behaviour targeting is the main pull. It can be beneficial for almost all kinds of businesses but E-commerce websites selling youth oriented, classically artisanal and creative products can specifically employ social advertising and derive its maximum potential.
4. Remarketing – Arguably one of the most diligently persuasive online media ads in the digital marketing verse. It essentially is exactly what the name suggests, retargeting certain viewers who have either searched for your product or service  or might have visited your website recently. This particular ad captures those particular users and then shows the ads for your particular offerings again on some other media platform, may it be social or otherwise. One may even opt for a remarketing campaign otherwise known as Sequential Remarketing, in which a whole campaign is built around the aspect of reminding a particular user about your business offerings, just like the notifications one gets from an online food delivery or an online flight or cab booking apps, in order to instigate a sense of urgency in the minds of their users and indulge them in the process of buying. E-commerce websites with homogenous or a product offering which is not quite unique in the market can make use of a remarketing ad campaign.
5. Shopping Ads – These ads are a great way to advertise a particular product where price differentiation is one of the key attributes to entice your consumer to buy from you. These ads often are seen on various search engine ranking pages (SERPs) results when one might search for a particular product offering or a related keyword just like search ads, the difference being that an image and description of the product is also shown in the ad and most definitely different the price comparisons. Such ads can be extremely effective for businesses who have an undifferentiated product to offer like E-commerce and other similar websites.
6. Gmail Sponsored Email Ads – These particular types of ads are an extension of Google Ads and a great avenue for broadcasting and brand awareness purposes, amongst the elitist of elites. Google directly shows an extended version of your ad in the form of an email in the inbox of your prospects. They can go through and study your offerings in a much more detailed and contrasting way.
7. Instream Ads – These may either be videos, banners or even texts one may see while watching a video over the internet, especially on YouTube. Instream Ads are often seen on the bottom of the screen of a video or a skippable or even a non-skippable video ad in between the video you might be browsing. YouTube is essentially the market leader in dealing with such types of ads and have even been quite influential when it comes to deriving results. Instream ads can be extremely beneficial for promoting a Software as a Service (SAAS), a new product launch, promoting another business channel or profile, information broadcasting, etc.