AdWords is Google’s flagship advertising product, and main source of

revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and sitetargeted

advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program

includes local, national, and international distribution. Google’s text

advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text

lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising

Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.

Site targeted advertisements

In 2003 Google introduced site-targeted advertising. Using the AdWords

control panel, advertisers can enter keywords of interest, and Google

offers to place ads on what they claim are relevant sites within their

content network. Advertisers then bid on a cost per mille (CPM) basis for

placement. However, Google does not provide advertisers with a list of

sites where their ads have been placed, and there is evidence that many of

the “content network” sites are merely ad pages set up on parked

domains. Advertisers can provide a list of sites where they do not wish

their ads to appear, but cannot obtain a list of sites where their ads could

or do appear.

AdWords distribution

All AdWords ads are eligible to be shown on www.google.com.

Advertisers also have the option of enabling their ads to show on

Google’s partner networks. The “search network” includes AOL search,

Ask.com, and Netscape. Like www.google.com, these search engines

show AdWords ads in response to user searches.

The “content network” shows AdWords ads on sites that are not search

engines. These content network sites are those that use AdSense, the

other side of the Google advertising model. AdSense is used by

publishers who wish to bring traffic to their websites. Click through rates

on the content network are typically much lower than those on the search

network and are therefore ignored when calculating an advertiser’s

quality score.

Notes - 7

Google automatically determines the subject of pages and displays

relevant ads based on the advertisers’ keyword lists. AdSense publishers

may select channels to help direct Google’s ad placements on their pages,

to better track performance of their ad units. There are many different

types of ads you can run across Google’s network, including text ads,

image ads (banner ads), local business ads, mobile text ads, and in-page

video ads.

Google AdWords’ main competitors are Yahoo! Search Marketing and

Microsoft adCenter.