Rapidly Determining Online Ad performance

Determining advertising performance is a huge deal. With traditional advertising such as newspaper, billboards, radio, and television, one has to wait for the campaign to run to determine if his or her advertising money was well spent. This is not the case with Internet advertising. Internet advertising offers the ability to see almost immediate results. Lets take a look at the process.

We will use Google AdWords for an example. Google AdWords allows you to create Internet advertisements that will display alongside of search results in a Google.com search. Google Adwords also allows your ads to be displayed on the webpages of people who want to reap advertising returns by allowing Google to post relevant ads on their site. In either case, Google AdWords connects the advertiser with his target demographic by product interest.

Here is how it works. Google AdWords allows the advertiser to create ad campaigns that connects a product to a potential buyer by connecting search and content terms to your ad. You are given the opportunity to create an ad in its entirety including header, content, and link. You choose the word connection, how much you want to spend (bidding), and the times you want your ad to run. Google will then match your ad with search terms and website content to display your ads. Your ads can, and probably will, be placed along side of other relevant ads.

When your ad is clicked, the potential buyer is taken to your site, and you are charged for the click (unless you are paying by impression). Seems simple enough right? Here is where the beauty comes in. Using Internet advertising on places like Google AdWords and Facebook ads, you can immediately see the results. Being able to quickly see what is happening allows you to do some creative strategies. The largest advantage to this is where you can produce more than one ad per campaign and balance the frequency of their appearance. Each ad should be slightly different while still advertising the same thing.

After starting your campaign with two different ads for the same product, you should begin to see which ad is getting the most clicks. After a small amount of time, drop the poor performer and develop another ad to take its place. You will begin competing the two against each other. Every so often continue to drop the poorest performer and replace it with a new ad. This will allow you to develop an ad that performs well and achieves your goals.

This has just been an overview. Think about the possibilities of competing ads to develop the ultimate ad campaign. The Internet allows you to adjust your ad in a matter of hours rather than waiting to see what is happening in one or two months. Besides, the Internet has a much larger audience base than your typical billboard or newspaper run.