PPC Advertising – Where Do Ads Appear?

A few month ago I was down in Tulum, Mexico during the height of turtle season. Now, my wife and I were very excited about seeing the tiny turtles hatch from their eggs on the beach and migrate to the ocean. However, when we got to the beach we didn’t even know where to look, so how could we see this natural phenomenon?

It can be the same with your ads. You get super excited to start your campaign, but do you really know where your ads are going to appear? Are they appearing in front of the right people who want to see the phenomenon that is your ads?

To find the turtles, we consulted the experts and you can do the same with your ads, which is what we are going to help you with today. So, where do your ads appear?

The short answer is…wherever you tell them to. What do I mean by that? Well, here you go:

Search Ads

Search ads refer to ads that appear in search engines (the major ones are Google, Bing, Yahoo, and also YP.com). When you start a campaign, these ads will appear on these search engines subject to the search phrases you have chosen. For example, if your dental practice wanted to get more Invisalign patients, you would create ads that appeared when people searched “Invisalign dentist”.

Basically, you have control of where your ads appear – but it takes work. You need to chose relevant keywords and make sure your ad copy contains that keyword and links to a quality landing page (more on that later).

Your search ads appear on search result pages you have targeted and this includes desktop, tablet or mobile.

Social Ads

For these ads, we are going to use Facebook as our example. When you run a pay per click Facebook campaign, you’re able to target who you want to see your ads based on demographics, location, interests and much more.

 

You can then select where you want your ads to appear:

• In the news feed on desktop, mobile or both
• Right-hand column
• In mobile apps

So, again, you’re in control of where your ads appear.

When you start your campaigns – whether independently or with an agency – make sure to include a strategy that clearly defines where you want your ads to appear. If you want phone calls, target mobile. If you want more website traffic, target desktop.

In sum, in both search engine results and social media news feeds, your PPC ads will appear where you want them to.