Google is the undisputed killer-app in PPC advertising. By virtue of it size and scope Google allows advertisers to highly leverage their activity over a huge spectrum of web users on both search engine results pages (SERPs) and contextual ads appearing on participating websites. But...
This size also means smaller advertisers can be crowded out by larger competitors with deeper pockets drive bidding up to untenable levels. However, a number of excellent alternatives exist that sometimes offer much better value for money than Adwords. By using these programs in place of Adwords advertisers can significantly increase traffic to their websites for a lot less money.
Many of these programs also have much looser terms and conditions that allow advetisers to create campaigns they could not run on Google without getting rejected. If you looking for effective alternatives to Google then take a look at these Top 10 alternatives to Google's Adwords program that are ideal for the small time advertiser and business..
Top 10 Paid Search alternatives to Google's Adwords
AdBriteClicksor
Bidvertiser
Exit Junction
Chitika
AdToll
Yahoo Publisher Network
Target Point
Fastclick
ClickThruTraffic
Note: These descriptions do not represent any form of endorsement every business is responsible for choosing the programs that best fit theri needs.
AdBrite
AdBrite should be your first stop when shopping for adwords alternatives. Small Business advertizers can use AdBrite to set ad rates and effectively reach over 370 million visitors on more than 80,000 sites all with a single campaign buy. AdBrite's continues to grow their market share. However, most of Adbrite's traffic is outside the U.S.While AdBrite can provide advertisers with better ads and formats, plus you can purchase display ads directly on sites showing AdBrite ads for very cost effective rates -- something the other ad systems don't typically do.
AdBrite offers
- Text Ads
- Banners
- Full Page Ads
- Inline Ads
- BritePic (Custom interactive photo ads)
Clicksor
Clicksor is another leader in the field providing CPC and CPM advertizing solutions that are similar to Adwords but cheaper and possibly very effective for small businesses. Clicksor offers a wide range of ad formats including all of the standard Adwords formats plus some very effective alternatives such as pop under and interstitial ads.Clicksor has a large network of high quality publishers while still offering bid prices that are significantly lower than equivalent keywords on Adwords. Like most smaller networks Clicksor is more tolerant than Google. Clicksor allows you to start advertising from just 0.3c per click.
Clicksor also has a big advantage over a number of the lower ranked alternatives on this site in that their ads are truly context sensitive. Thus as an advertiser you can be sure that your ads show only on relevant sitesincreasing their effectiveness.
The ad creation and campaign control tools provided by Clicksor are rudimentary but enough for you to keep track of all of your campaign rsults and expenses.
Clicksor Offers:
Multiple formats available including text, image and animated ads.
- Text Links
- Image Ads
- Flash Ads
- Animation Ads
- Banners
- Pop unders
- Interstitial Ads (NEW)
- Dynamic (DHTML) highlighting
Bidvertiser
BidVertiser offers some intriguing ad formats including what they refer to as free design. Free design lets you specify the look and dimensions of your text ads so you can stand out from the crowd. I have not investigated how well it works but imagine that it could be difficult to setup. But, if you have access to cheap graphic design then customizing could result in more cost efficient ads.BidVertiser can be used to drive customers to eBay listings. Once you select your eBay item the ad is created for you automatically with the minimum amount of effort. A great be if you are doing a lot of business on Ebay.
Bidvertiser offers:
- Pay only for the clicks you receive.
- Site-Targeted pay per click advertising.
- Create your ads in minutes.
- Choose your geographic targeting
- Closely monitor the performance of your ads
Exit Junction (for publishers) /Dynamic Oxygen (for advertisers)
Exit Junction is not strictly an adword alternative but is an excellent addition other contextual advertising programs. As their name implies Exit Junctions approach is to capture exit traffic from participating sites.Here's how it works
- A user runs a Google search and a website you are advertising on scores highly for that keyword
- The user clicks the link and visits the page
- When the user presses the back button to exit the page and go back to the original search results Exit Junction intercepts the back command and show a set of sponsored links that match the original Google search term.
Chitika
Chitika offers what they call impulse merchandising. Chitika offers innovative publisher-side advertising and merchandising solutions.Chitika can be considered an Adwords alternative only if you are selling product via e-commerce. Chitika allows you to compliment your existing PPC advertising campaigns with ads featuring specific products for sale directly through their advertisements. Instead of displaying the 'industry standard' advert boxes with image, video and text Chitika provides active boxes that show targeted products from your advertising campaigns. As an advertiser you only pay for the click thru on the ad if someone actually purchases the product.
Chitika tracks people arriving at the participating publisher website via search engines and then converts the search engine string into a series of keywords. COOL. Then Chitika serves an advertisement featuring products deemed appropriate for the keywordsfound in the string.
Chitika is a proven channel for targeting on-line consumers and qualified buyers with appropriate merchadise on the fly as they surf.
AdToll
AdToll is an adwords alternative offering unique creatives that charge on a CPC basis. AdToll's newest technology is the Peel Away Ad. This is a technology that allows you to advertise in the form of ads that peel away on the top right hand side of a web site. The key to this ad format is that when the mouse moves over the peel it opens in a smooth manner to reveal the advert underneath.The new ad format allows publishers to make use of the lesser used, yet highly visible top corners of web sites and provides you the advertiser with a space to place your ads that is noticeable, intriguing to website visitors, and higly flexible with regard to graphic presentattion. Atoll's peel away It is also a very non intrusive form of advertising.
TargetPoint
Targetpoint is an Adwords alternative with services that allow your to have absolute control over the appearance of your ads. They provide strict supervision over ad content which preserves the quality of their network and reduces CPC and CPM costs from fraudulent clicks and sites.TargetPoint can be very choosy regarding which sites are accepted into either the advertising or the publishing programs. They are mainly interested in very large accounts and so if you are a small business owner looking for a cost effective but small advertising solution then this is probably not the best choice but does provide and alternative if all else fails.
Target Point offers:
- Provides support for context-relevant, revenue-evaluated ads.
- Exitpoint provides a way to show your ads to web site exit traffic.
- Imagepoint allows you to use visual ads. These are known to the rest of the world as Image ads.
- Underpoint provides for pop-under ad windows.
- Registration is free and there is no obligation.
ValueClick
At first glance ValueClick would appear to be one of the better alternatives to Google's Adwords program providing a range of value ad products to advertisers along with lower CPM and CPC costs than Adwords. However they are only interested in large customers and so most people will not qualify.You would have thought that these companies would have learned from Google's success and realize that the best way to make money is by targeting both small and large customers.
If you can get yourself accepted to ValueClick then you may be able to create some excellent campaigns on high profile websites. However, be prepared to pay for the privilege.
ValueClick offers:
- Image Ads
- Text based creatives.
- Interstitial Ads
- Pop-Under Adverts
- InVue - a custom ad format.
- ClickThruTraffic
Advert wise they offer the standard selection of context based text links, buttons and banners.
Yahoo and MSN
You probably already know about these two. Both are very similar to Google as far as offeriing a lot of tracking info an analytical tools but they are both significantly more difficult to use.Yahoo continues to be an also-ran lagging far behind Google and getting further behind all the time. But if you want to extend your reach then give them a try. Lots of people continue to use them for search. Be prepared to pull out some hair along the way.
MSN has potential to be a contender. They are contiuing to try new things most of which have not worked. Their newest trick seems to be serving up contextual ads not based on the content of the page but on the profile of the person doing the search. I guess they are finally going to start using all that detailed info they have been collecting about us for the past 20 years.
