Online Advertising Survival: Combating Click Fraud - University of ...

use the internet while shopping for a car, 88% will visit an average of seven automotiveWeb sites before making a purchase. At the same time, their return on investment isgreater with internet advertising, with an average cost of $200 per car sold versus $550for traditional advertising. In short, internet advertising works and is becoming big abusiness.4. How Does Pay Per Click Advertising Work?Pay per click advertising is the most popular way for online advertisers to reach potentialcustomers. It is estimated that more than 90% of consumers use the internet to researchbefore making purchasing decisions and 85% of all visits to Web sites originate throughsearch engines 17 . The search engines in turn bring visitors to their sites for a price.Search engines like Google and Yahoo offer advertisers pay per click plans, which costadvertisers anywhere from as low as a penny per click on a text link. Popular keywordswill cost an advertiser much more as bidders drive the cost up.When you run a search on any of the major search engines, along with the usual list ofresults, there will appear “sponsored links” which are the paid advertisements. Theranking of these sponsored links are based upon how much the advertiser is willing topay or “bid” for each phrase or word. Obviously the higher the bid, the higher up uponthe list you are and the greater visibility you will have. You effectively buy your way tothe top of the search engine ratings.17 dda, dynamic digital advertising LLC, http://www.zeroonezero.com/Services/search-engine-service.html,Retrieved June 13, 200812