But then, i needed to. I needed to generate buzz, and get as much traffic to my website as possible! I needed to create awareness, like a billboard or banner at the mall, i needed to create awareness and draw in the mosquitos to the light to buy buy buy! So i got started with AdWords. It wasn’t till two weeks later, and close to $100 down, that i started to analyse the cost-benefit of this Google empowered tool. Now before you start thinking, “well this idiot just doesn’t know how to use AdWords right”, you’re far off the point on this one.

The ads simply weren’t performing. Sure there was traffic coming to the site, and very fast. My impressions to click ratio was pretty decent, considering i rarely click on ads while i do Google searches, or click on ads on a website. But then when i went to my log file analyser, awstats, it showed people would click, then bounce. Even down to looking at webserver log files in real time, some people would even just click on the ad, and wouldn’t even wait till any content displayed on the website, till they bounced. Now yes, the web-server didn’t crash.

So what does this all mean? Well i got thinking. In this deep state of thought i stumbled upon the idea, that due to Google AdWord’s nature of bidding on ad placement amongst fellow advertisers, people perceive the worth of online advertising to be way too high than it’s actually worth! The key difference, why you shouldn’t even begin to think that online advertising is equal or even more viable than offline traditional advertising media is purely because of the platform that online advertising media is on!

It’s online! It’s not in a shopping mall. No, believe it or not, people don’t go online, with their credit cards in hand, their budgets in mind, and browse the internet searching for things to splurge their money on. No. It’s a completely different shopping experience. People go around researching, checking out different options, they click, click and click.

But again, online isn’t a shopping mall. People are more prepared to spend money at a shopping mall, they are far easier to convert and to be persuaded, simply because they are prepared to spend money, before they even stepped through the doors of the mall, they are prepared to spend money. People online however are a much different breed. They could be just filling in time, accidently clicking on adverts that you are paying for, researching and never coming back, they could be interested but not have anywhere near the money you are after!

But how do you differentiate and target your prospective online users? Well you can’t to a degree. If i had an upper-market shoe-shop, i would put it in more wealthy areas. I would make the prices expensive, and the advertising to match the prices. I could immediately tell if the person had no money, or if they had a million dollars in their back pockets, as soon as they walk passed my store. Online? How does one tell if the person, of which you are paying for, who clicked on your advert has any money? Or if they have an intent on buying? You really don’t.

That’s why i feel paying so much for online advertising is so overly inflated, simply because the traditional marketing techniques and models are being applied to online marketing techniques. Who is benefiting from this? The people you are paying to have your links being falsely clicked. What can you do about it. Reduce your max bid to 50% below what you have set it to!