PPC ad copy ‘becoming more important’

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising copy has become more important as users are looking for a broader selection of keywords, those considering web hosting have been told.

Jeremy Lamothe, writing on the Microsoft Advertising Community blog, said that there are a number of tips companies can take onboard to create successful PPC ad copy.

Researching the competition is key, Mr Lamothe explained, and firms should look to try out searching their most important keywords before trying to create copy that stands out from the rest.

Negative keywords should also be taken into consideration as they are often overlooked when producing ad copy, he explained.

Updating negative keywords will help get rid of unwanted traffic to a website which will in turn bring higher return on investment and click-through rate, Mr Lamothe commented.

He said that the organisation of keywords is also of importance and no more than 20 of these should be included for each ad group.

The segmentation of keywords into different ad groups will help in producing ad copy that will bring results, Mr Lamothe added.

His comments come after a Practical eCommerce survey revealed that over three-quarters (77.3 per cent) of respondents said they actively used PPC advertising as part of their online marketing initiatives.

Over one-third of respondents said that they spent less than $100 (£61) on PPC advertising each month.

Meanwhile, most of those polled said that it was positive that Google had some competition in search engine PPC advertising with Microsoft’s Bing now around.

Over four-fifths (86.7 per cent) of respondents said they thought Google needed a stronger competitor, while 22.7 per cent asserted that Google was becoming a monopoly.

"These initial data suggest that Microsoft Bing has generated early interest, resulting in a spike in search engagement and an immediate term improvement to Microsoft’s position in the search market," Practical eCommerce cited Mike Hurt, comScore senior vice president, as saying.