The Complete Guide to the Advantages and Disadvantages of Paid Advertising

In today’s competitive advertising market, it is important to keep up with the trends and reach the maximum number of potential customers with equal ease. Two of the most popular kind of advertisements available are pay per click (PPC) and sponsored content.

Tackling the Terms: What Is PPC Advertising and Sponsored Content?

PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising is based on the number of clicks on a particular advertisement. In general, there is a pre-established contract between the publisher of the ad, such as websites and blogs, and the advertiser. Consumers of a particular website or service, upon clicking on the ad, inadvertently generate revenue.

Sponsored content on the other hand generally works on the basis of blog outreach and guest blogging. In this, a blogger or website editor publishes an article either authored by the blogger themselves, guest blogger or company. Generally, sponsored content is a more innocuous form of advertising because it depends on subtly influencing potential customers without distancing them with traditional advertising methods.

The Things No One Told You about PPC Advertising

There are several advantages to using PPC advertising, including but not limited to:

• PPC works on the basis of click-through rates, which is why Google AdWords, keyword incorporation, and direct adverts can all fall under this category.
• PPC campaigns can include both refined landing page systems and splitting of ad groups to maximize impact.
• PPC helps by narrowing down the target customers interested in a particular, often related, product or service.

However, the disadvantages of using PPC cannot be ignored either:

• PPC ads and anything which outright tries to sell an object tends to get cold-shoulders from more people.
• It can also be quite expensive for smaller businesses and startups to incorporate because there are extensive campaigns involved.
• There are multiple factors to take into account, including people’s general paranoia regarding sponsored advertisements.

What You Need to KnowAbout Sponsored Content

Sponsored content has many positive factors, including:

• Ability to merge in seamlessly with existing content on a site, allowing it to be a more natural way of advertising and grabbing additional attention.
• Sponsored content has the authentic stamp of approval from some trusted website or blogger, and this personal endorsement goes a long way.
• Social media sharing is also enabled through the use of sponsored content and thus generates a greater range of audiences.

There are very few disadvantages of sponsored content, but the primary concerns include:

• Concern over ethical issues is a big factor, primarily because brand influence on bloggers can often be perceived with suspicion.
• Uncertainty about articles followed by “paid” or “sponsored by” tags.

So What Should You Decide on Ultimately?

Comparing PPC and Sponsored Content with Google Analytics. It can be easy to see how some PPC advertising has higher bounce rates than sponsored content. On the other hand, they can provide a greater number of “impressions”, whereas sponsored content can get more shares. Overall, sponsored content can be a great opportunity for obtaining organic, native advertising, but PPC gives it some stiff competition.

Mariia Lvovych is an established guest blogger and entrepreneur, owner at GetReviewed.org brand new sponsored blog posts platform.