PPC advertising providers

Buying pay-per-click advertising is possible through a number of different providers, whether in Australia or to target international markets. Although Overture (now Yahoo! Search Marketing) was the first commercially successful PPC service, Google's dominance of the search market meant that Google AdWords quickly became the market leader, offering a high share of the search market in many countries, and a user-friendly management interface.

If you're planning, or running, a PPC advertising campaign, Google AdWords has to be a primary consideration, but there are also other providers that need to be considered and tested, with many offering lower bid costs and higher conversion rates due to less competition between advertisers. We have reviewed the main Australian PPC providers below, and listed their main features, history, strengths and weaknesses, to help you to make an informed decision on which are the best to use.

• Google AdWords: undoubtedly the market leader in terms of search share in Australia, plus the AdWords interface is relatively easy to use and packed with targeting, management and reporting features. Read more....
• Yahoo! Search Marketing: having acquired Overture - which was the first commercially successful PPC advertising platform - the Yahoo! PPC service has gone through a series of changes and still remains a key player in the market, despite its hard-to-use management interface. Read more....
• Microsoft adCenter: Microsoft launched their own PPC tool some years ago, with some innovative targeting features and a reasonable management interface. However, this service is currently limited to the US, UK and some smaller country markets. Read more....
• Sensis BidSmart: this was an Australian-targeted PPC service, using Telstra's network of websites, but the search results and PPC adverts have since been superceded by a deal with Google and Google AdWords. Read more....

* NB: The merger in 2009 between the search services of Microsoft and Yahoo! is likely to result in the combination of PPC coverage and management between both search engines under one tool. Although this currently happens in Australia through Yahoo! Search Marketing, the launch of a new combined service and management interface is expected before the end of 2010.

If you are looking to start running pay-per-click advertising with any of these providers or need to improve the effectiveness of your current campaign, find out more about our PPC management service or contact us now for more information. You can also request a FREE website assessment to receive a 'no obligation' review of your website with our proposals on what you could achieve with a successful search engine marketing campaign.