Pay-per-click (PPC) ads appear in prime locations on search engines like Google and social networks like Facebook, with PPC ads on Google appearing above the organic search results, and PPC ads on Facebook appearing throughout the user’s News Feed. Particularly for businesses looking to drive more immediate traffic to their website using prime online real estate, PPC advertising can be extremely effective.

PPC ad auctions vary across platforms, but they typically use algorithms to evaluate the advertiser’s bid, as well as the relevancy and/or effectiveness of the ad. Optimal ads are placed across the most desired online real estate such as the top of the Google search results or the primary placements on a user’s Facebook feeds. While the advertiser bid is an important element within the auction, the most relevant and effective ads are typically prioritized for better placements. PPC ad auctions offer rich performance insights, and effective, relevant PPC ads can drive significant online traffic for lower costs than irrelevant or ineffective ads.

One of the most important PPC ad attributes is the cost per click (CPC) that an advertiser pays. As mentioned, a more relevant or effective ad can result in a lower cost per click for the advertiser, which is why effective PPC management is so valuable. While an expected cost per click can vary significantly across industries and change over time, I like to rely on WordStream’s Google Ads benchmarks. According to Wordstream, the average CPC is $2.69 for Google Search ads and $0.63 for Google Display ads, with a range of $1.16 to $6.75 across Google Search and $0.44 to $1.49 across Google Display.

Both Google and Facebook offer powerful, effective advertising opportunities, and both platforms come with their own benefits and drawbacks. While Facebook advertising works very well for particular products and industries, I often recommend advertising on Google over Facebook for a number of reasons, including:

• • Purchase intent – Users primarily go to Google to find something that they’re looking for, but primarily go to Facebook to check in and socialize with friends.
  • Ad relevance – On Google Search, the keywords within an ad are a significant element of determining ad relevance, and this is easier for the advertiser to control and adjust. On Facebook, user interests and activity are a significant element of determining ad relevance, which is difficult to control, and in many cases inaccurate or outdated.
  • Looking ahead – Apple’s recent privacy changes significantly hamper Facebook’s ad tracking capabilities. These changes deliver a prompt on Apple devices that asks users whether they’d like their apps – including the Facebook app – to track their activity across other websites, and many users choose to opt out, which significantly limits Facebook ad performance insights. In contrast, the majority of users go directly to the Google website, where this prompt isn’t in place.

It’s important to remember that search engines change constantly, and there is no one way to guarantee specific ad placements. Ad placements also change depending on the user, their location and their previous browsing habits, so different users will see different ads. Lastly, the inventory for PPC ads is almost unlimited, so it’s extremely important that ads are well paced and set with reasonable campaign budgets and maximum costs per click, to avoid spending significant amounts of money in short time periods.