In this guide-

+ Background on online advertising
+ Features to look for in online advertising services
+ How to find the best online advertising services for you

Background on online advertising
If you are looking to promote a product or service online, the good news is that you have a lot of online advertising options available. The better news is that online advertising offers you the ability to 1. set your own budget, regardless of how big or small, and 2. track your advertising dollars better than with any other type of media.

This short guide was created to help you understand the basics on how online advertising works and to help you choose the right online advertising service for you. We do not sell any online advertising services ourselves, so you can be assured that all of the information in this guide is independent and unbiased.

Features to look for in online advertising services
There are several different ways of advertising online, and several different methods of getting your message across to the user. Below is a description of the major features and components of online advertising services:

Delivery Methods
Portal/Publisher Ads- this is the type of online advertising that most closely reflects traditional print (magazine) advertising. In its most basic form, you find a site that attracts the kind of visitors you would like to advertise to, and pay the owner of that site money to have your ad on that site. For example, if you were selling bicycles, then you would find the sites that are about bicycling or sports, and place your ad on that site.

Search Engine/Keyword Ads- this type of online advertising takes advantage of the unique search capability of the Internet. Virtually all search engines (there are several hundred search engines, although most people have only heard of a few) make money by selling ads that are based on the 'keyword', or term that was searched. For example, if you do a search for 'bicycle' in a search engine, that search engine will display ads for companies selling bicycles and/or bicycle-related items. The efficiency of this system is that the advertiser gets to say what searched keywords will generate his or her ad. To carry this example further, the advertiser selling bicycles could add such words as 'mountain bike', 'bicycle helmets', 'bicycle accessories', and so on.

Search engines have slightly different policies and abilities, but some can even utilize negative keywords (words or phrases that you DON'T want to generate your ads- like 'bicycle repairs' in the above example if your store did not in fact do repairs) or broad-