Nowadays, it’s rare to find a business that isn’t trying to bolster its online presence, and PPC platforms often play crucial roles in those digital marketing pushes. However, choosing the right platform to showcase your brand and snag potential leads effectively isn’t always easy.
As a newbie in the world of paid media, navigating your way around all the major PPC platforms can be pretty confusing. Especially when you need to figure out which features and options would fit your company’s needs — it’s hardly the same to advertise through optimized explainer videos as it is using CTA-ready static ads!
So, to help you find the best tool for the job, we’ve broken down five critical aspects of the most popular PPC platforms around to make sure you find one (or more) with the features you need to help your online marketing strategy grow.
Google Ads
As the biggest and most popular PPC platform used today, Google Ads has become a cost-effective way for many businesses to reach target audiences through paid media. With online marketplaces becoming overly saturated with competitors, many digital marketers turn to Google Ads to break through the noise and generate brand awareness.
Here are some of the key aspects you need to know about this PPC ad platform:
Reach
If there’s one thing you can expect from the world’s most used search engine, is that it obtains a massive reach. Generating more than 40 thousand search queries every second and 1.2 trillion each year, there isn’t a search engine or platform out there that can offer the audience potential that Google Ads can.
Ad Formats
- Text ads
- Image ads
- Video ads
- Responsive ads
- Product Shopping ads
- Showcase Shopping ads
- Call-only ads
- App promotion ads
Ad Placements
- Ads appear within Google search engine results and other Google search sites.
- They also appear on websites that are a part of Google’s Display Network.
Pricing
Ad costs are unique to businesses as they are dependent on the details of a campaign and ad settings like budget, bid, keywords, and targeting. It also considers performance in the Google ad auction, focusing on its Quality Score and Ad Rank. Having said all that, an average estimate for ad costs would be as follows:
- Average ad spend $9000 to $10,000 per month on big campaigns.
- Average cost-per-click on the Google Search Network: $1 to $2
- Average cost-per-click on the Google Display Network: Less than $1
- Google Ads Management: 12-30% of ad spend per month
- PPC Management Tools: $15 to $800 per month.
Pro
- Great exposure: What business would happily pass up the opportunity to rank high on the Internet’s largest search engine? When used successfully, Google ads can bring in a massive amount of traffic to your online presence.
Con
- Can’t neglect SEO: When ranking ads, Google considers websites that have quality landing pages and relevant content. So, optimization is still a big part of getting good Google Ads campaign results.
Microsoft Advertising
Did you know that the Microsoft Search Network accounts for more than 35% of desktop searches in the U.S alone? As Google ads’ strongest competitor in terms of paid search, Microsoft Ads has established itself as a worthy alternative.
Reach
The platform allows marketers to reach more than 20 million monthly unique searchers on its network.
Ad Formats
- Microsoft Advertising in Bing Smart Search
- Microsoft Audience Ads
- Microsoft Product Ads
- Microsoft Dynamic Search Ads
- Microsoft Responsive Search Ads
- Microsoft Expanded Text Ads
Pricing
Microsoft ads are similar in structure and purpose to Google Ads, as the platform also relies heavily on search queries to target people. Hence, you will also need to use a bidding system for specific keywords to determine your ad rank.
- The average cost per click (CPC) on Bing is $1.54.
- The cost per keyword depends on the keywords within your ad and your bid.
Ad Placements
- Search ads will appear on the search results page on search engines such as Bing, AOL, and Yahoo.
- Since Bing, AOL and Yahoo are partner sites, these ads will appear on websites within their network as well.
Pro
- Higher reach for desktop users: Brands can use Microsoft ads to reach more than 40 million desktop users that Google cannot.
Con
- Less flexible ads: Compared to Google ads, Microsoft ads only allow for one to two headlines instead of three, and fewer characters with 80 instead of 90.
YouTube Advertising
Being the second-most popular search engine on the planet, YouTube is accessed by almost one-third of the Internet’s users, and it stands as the best PPC platform to advertise through the use of quality video content like high-quality explainer videos.
Reach
YouTube receives an average of 14 billion views per month, that’s more than Instagram and Facebook receive combined. With so many frequent visitors, the platform gives businesses the potential to reach 2.56 billion users.
Ad Formats
- Skippable in-stream ads
- Non-skippable in-stream ads
- In-feed video ads
- Bumper ads
- Outstream ads
- Masthead ads
Pricing
- The cost of YouTube ads depends on your ad format, bid, bidding selection, and targeting options. However, the average cost per ad click or view lies between $0.10 to $0.30.
Ad Placements
- YouTube search results.
- YouTube videos.
- Video partners within their Display Network.
Pro
- Massive reach: Since over 80% of internet users in the U.S use YouTube on a regular basis, it serves as the perfect platform to target key audiences.
Con
- Disruptive ads: If your ad isn’t engaging, many users will see it as a nuisance interrupting their current viewing and clicking the skip button asap.
Facebook Ads
77% of Internet users are active on at least one Meta platform, Facebook being one of the most popular. Social media automation is rising to the top of most marketing strategies, with social ads becoming the next best thing to paid search ads. Digital marketers don’t only use Facebook ads because of its cost efficiency but because of its ability to accurately position their ads in front of specific target audiences.
Reach
As one of the few social giants, Facebook hosts an audience of 2.91 billion monthly users with an ad reach of 2.11 billion.
Ad Formats
- App ads
- Domain ads
- Mobile app ads
- Offer ads
- Page-like ads
- Page post link ads
- Page post photo ads
- Page post text ads
- Page post video ads
- Sponsored stories
Pricing
The cost of Facebook ads depends on your bidding model, campaign objective, audience, and quality score. An average estimate for ad costs would be as follows:
- Average cost-per-click (CPC): $0.97
- Average cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM): $7.19
- Average cost-per-like (CPL): $1.07
- Average cost-per-download (CPA): $5.47
Ad Placements
- In the right-hand column of the user’s feed.
- Within the user’s newsfeed.
- Facebook marketplace.
- The user’s Messenger inbox.
Pro
- Detailed targeting: Your ads will be shown to people who are more likely to find them useful. With an engaging call to action, your potential leads will be one click away from your landings and conversion funnel elements. Facebook ad’s interface also allows you to select interests your audience may have to improve its targeting accuracy.
Con
- More competition: With thousands of businesses dedicated to using Facebook Ads exclusively, you’ll find yourself competing for popular keywords and paying higher ad costs when bidding for them.
Instagram Ads
What’s something every marketer knows about Instagram? Visuals, visuals, visuals! Instagram ads stand as the ideal PPC platform to draw in new audiences through ads that use eye-catching graphics and short, creative, visually captivating videos.
Reach
Instagram is the second-fastest-growing social media network nearing one billion monthly active users and has the potential to reach an average of 1.2 billion users.
Ad Format
- Image feed ads
- Story image ads
- Video feed ads
- Video story ads
- Carousel feed ads
- Canvas story ads
Pricing
On average, Instagram advertising costs sit between $0.20 to $6.70. They depend on your bidding model and cost-per-impressions (CPM). An average estimate for ad costs would be as follows:
- Average cost-per-click (CPC): $0.20 to $2.
- Average cost-per-impression (CPM): $6.70 per 1000 impressions.
- Average cost-per-engagement (CPE): $0.01 to $0.05
Ad Placements
- In the feed and/or the stories section of Instagram.
Pro
- Unobtrusive ads: Promoted ads appear seamlessly on users’ feeds and stories, making them great for generating brand awareness in unobtrusive ways.
Con
- Limited demographic reach: Instagram is not a great platform to target the older demographics as the majority of users are aged between 18-and 29.
Twitter Ads
Lastly, we get to the world’s seventh favorite social media platform. While Twitter ads may not rule the PPC sector, it comes with a few unique benefits, such as easily reaching target audiences and generating higher click-through rates. If your audience is predominantly on Twitter, it serves as an indispensable advertising platform.
Reach
The platform has 330 million active users, and of those users, 145 million are reachable through ads.
Ad Format
- Promoted tweets
- Promoted accounts
- Promoted trends
Pricing
Pricing depends on the ad format
- Promoted tweets: $0.50-$2.00 per action.
- Promoted accounts: $2-$4 per follow.
- Promoted trends: $200,000 per day.
Ad Placements
- Any promoted content will appear only once, near the top of (or within) a user’s feed.
Pro
- Less competition and cheaper ad costs: Since Twitter ads are less competitive when compared to other PPC platforms, clicks and impressions are much cheaper, and your target audiences will be easier to reach.
Con
- Hard to navigate: The Twitter ads interface isn’t renowned for being user-friendly, especially when having to simultaneously deal with a slow server. It’ll take quite a bit of practice before you get used to launching ads.
The first step to navigating any PPC platform is understanding the basics behind how it structures its ads. Knowing this will allow you to apply the knowledge to your paid media strategy and predict whether the platform will successfully draw in key audiences.
It’s important to remember that nobody (and we mean nobody) becomes a PPC specialist overnight. However, with a bit of practice, and some trial and error, you can learn how to master different ad platforms and use their services to help drive traffic to your business.
