Google AdWords

With the huge success that Google has been facing over the past few years, it is logical for companies to want to get involved with the most popular search engine. For those who are unfamiliar with what Google AdWords does, here’s a quick explanation. Google AdWords enables organizations to place their adverts on the right hand side of the Google search page, so that when an audience member types into the search bar specific words that are relevant to the organization’s purposes, their website link comes on the side. Through this, Google have managed to reach an advertising revenue of $28.2 billion in the year of 2010.

From a personal view, Google AdWords is a great way of companies to put themselves out there and into the digital world. Google has been facing a tremendous rise in popularity and usage by Internet users and is by far the most popular search engine. It has even prompted the English speaking population to come up with the phrase “Google it”, meaning ‘search it’. Additionally, Mintel's research shows that Internet users pay nearly twice as much attention to ads via search engines such as Google compared to social networks. Apart from the new preference of online media due to popularity, the recession and economic factors are another reason why companies choose to advertise online. Businesses look at a way that will reach their target market quickly and effectively. The following graph presents figures on the total online advertising between the years of 2001 and 2009.

 After familiarising myself with the purpose of Google AdWords, I had a little browse on Google search to see what would come up on the side. At first I typed in the word ‘cars’ and links to car websites, such as Volvo, Nissan and Mitsubishi came up. Subsequently, I typed in ‘bags’ and links to websites such as M&S and Amazon came up. 

Having observed that, I noticed how the big brand names don’t come up. This could be because smaller brands need to spend more money to get noticed and drive traffic to their website more than bigger brands would. And advertising through Google is definitely a guaranteed way to get attention from their intended audience! As mentioned in my previous blog, Interactivity; New Digital Bible, online advertising is a way for organisations to track their audience’s interactivity with the brand. So, if a company is hesitant as to whether they should advertise on Google AdWords, they could have a trial period where at the end of it they can see how successful it was and decide on whether they want to extend it or end it.

On the downside, speaking from personal experience, Google is very often used as just a quick search by the audience, which means that a lot of consumers don’t pay attention to the right hand side ads. That being said, Google AdWords is not suitable for all audiences, which is something companies must consider before working with Google.