In This Chapter

• Taking a closer look at AdWords
• Identifying great keywords
• Monitoring your campaign
• Writing ad copy that sells

The popularity of Google as a search engine has changed the entire advertising model on the web. Banners, pop-ups, and interstitials (ads shown between pages) are passe[as], bother viewers, produce poor results, and often cost much more than they're worth.

Google AdWords offers a different view of advertising where short text-only ads are displayed adjacent to search results. These ads represent a new advertising paradigm because they're contextually relevant rather than interrupt-driven advertising.

Note: Interrupt-driven advertising is advertising that interrupts what you're doing and forces you to view the advertisement. Television commercials are interrupt-driven advertising, while sponsor billboards on the side of a soccer field are not.

What's revolutionary about AdWords isn't the ad format, but the method that Google uses to determine which ads should be shown. AdWords advertisers list desirable keywords or search queries, then Google automatically includes the best matches as it generates search result pages. There's no fixed cost for these advertisements either. All ad space is sold through a bidding process where the most sought-after keywords for advertisers produce the highest bids.

One more wrinkle: AdWords charges per click, not per display, so if five thousand people see your advertisement and none of them click on it, you'll owe Google nothing. If your advertisement underperforms, however, generating too few click-throughs for the impressions it receives, Google will automatically pull it out of the rotation and require that you modify the ad text or change your keywords.

It's all rather complex, but once you understand the basics, you'll realize that for as little as five or ten dollars per month, you could have your products and services included in AdWords ads and be creating new customers every day.