The world of PPC marketing can be overwhelming.
Just like the 47 different types of milk available at your grocery store, there are twice as many PPC marketing channels to choose from (I found 72. And there are probably more).
You have no shortage of options, but you need to know which PPC channels will work best for your specific goals. And after that, which keywords and ads and landing pages work best as well.
Understanding which channels, keywords, ads, and landing pages to use is just the beginning. If you use all the PPC food groups in the right way, with the right portions, then you’ll be able to get the highest ROI possible.
That’s what this article and gifographic below will help you with.
Let’s take a look at the PPC Food Pyramid first:
Embed this gifographic on your site (copy and paste the code – coming soon!):
PPC Channels + Networks (6-11 Servings)
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Wouldn’t it be easy if you could eat the same delicious thing over and over again, and never dislike it?
I kinda feel the same way about PPC. If it was as simple as just using Google AdWords all the time, then I’d be ecstatic.
Google AdWords may be the biggest PPC channel out there, but at the time of writing this article, I found 71 PPC marketing channels that people just like you, are using to their advantage.
But be careful.
Using too many PPC channels doesn’t lead to a well balanced diet (just like eating too much bread won’t help you lose weight. Trust me, I’ve tried).
Instead, choose a few to begin with and see how they perform.
Once you find a winning PPC channel, then experiment with a new one. The more you diversify your PPC traffic sources, the better.
For the sake of not going overboard, I’ve highlighted three individual PPC networks within the different PPC channels. Then I added some additional ones for further reading if you’re interested.
We’re going to be looking at search engines, display networks, and even some PPC channels you’ve never heard of.
Let’s have a look.
Search Engine PPC
Google AdWords
Target your ads to customers in certain countries, regions or cities.
By far the biggest search engine out there with the biggest reach.
Claiming to reach over 90% of all internet users, the Google AdWords platform also owns almost 80% of all search traffic in the US alone.
The AdWords platform allows you to bid on those searches to direct traffic to your site or landing page in the hopes of a conversion.
Bing Ads
Bing Ads can have a lower CPC compared to AdWords.
In March of 2015, Bing officially passed the mark to achieve a search engine share of 20%.
Just like the Google search network, you can also bid on certain keywords within the Bing and Yahoo! search engines to have your ads appear.
Even with lower traffic volumes compared to Google, Bing Ads have found to be particularly profitable for advertisers targeting older demographics and overall, has lower average cost per clicks.
7Search
7Search is a Pay-Per-Click network connecting advertisers who want to reach targeted online audiences.
One of the more uncommon PPC search networks out there, 7Search helps you target your keywords with match types on multiple search engines and relevant sites.
You’ll find that the average cost per clicks here are even cheaper than Bing Ads, but the volume is also lower.
You can test out the average cost per click of any keyword by using their keyword tool here.
Other PPC Search Engines
Already using AdWords, Bing Ads, and 7Search?
No worries, here are some more PPC search engines that are less saturated than the ones mentioned above (but keep in mind that the targeting abilities can we worse):
AdKnowledge
AOL
Ask.com
Duck Duck Go
Infolinks
LookSmart
Marchex AdHere
Yahoo Gemini
Yahoo Search
Yellow Pages
Social Media PPC
Facebook
Know your target demographic? Facebook Ads is for you.
If you didn’t already know, Facebook is the fiercest competition Google has ever faced when it comes to PPC advertising.
With 78% of their advertising revenue coming from mobile devices and a 45% revenue growth from 2014, Facebook has capitalized on targeted PPC ads.
The biggest thing that will differentiate search engine PPC and social media PPC is the omission of keyword intent on the social networks.
But, if you know your target market and demographic well, Facebook could be much more profitable than any other PPC platform out there.
Twitter
Twitter Ads allow you to bid on your competitors’ followers.
If most of your target audience is hanging out on Twitter, then leading with educational content could be the best way for you to get more conversions.
Allowing you to bid on competitor followings and other targeting criteria, Twitter ads can be a great source either through direct targeting or retargeting.
One thing to keep in mind though, do not use hashtags or mentions in your Twitter ads as since it could reduce your click-through-rate by 23%.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn Ads can target people with certain career titles.
If you’re in the B2B space and want to target certain people with specific job titles, then LinkedIn may just be your favorite PPC playground.
Allowing you to target based off company size, the use of exclusions, and more, LinkedIn PPC ads can be perfect for you if you’re average conversion means high revenue.
Average cost per clicks can easily range anywhere from $4 – $10 since you’re competing in the same news feeds as other advertisers.
Other Social Media PPC Options
Instagram
Pinterest
Reddit
SlideShare
StumbleUpon
Display Advertising PPC
The display/content world of PPC in ginormous.
Having the most vendors of any PPC channel, display advertising is a massive spiderweb of real time bid requests that overlap and undercut each other.
Check out this list of display channels you could try today:
AdWords Display
Your business gets found by people on Google precisely when they’re searching for the things that you offer.
Just like AdWords rocks the search world, so does their platform when it comes to display advertising.
With over 2 million AdSense publishers (people that allow AdWords display ads on their sites), it’s easy to see how you can reach any audience you’re trying to. Now that the AdWords Display network has over seven different targeting options (and growing), you can quickly fine tune your campaigns to meet your PPC needs.
DoubleClick
Connect with the right people, in the right moments, with DoubleClick’s integrated solutions.
With over 56% of digital ads that never get seen, it’s important to understand what you can and can’t control when it comes to PPC advertising.
DoubleClick by Google is one of the most robust digital advertising solutions when it comes to squeezing all the ROI possible.
Being able to target just tablets or a specific model of a smartphone on a specific carrier, DoubleClick allows you to get really creative across multiple PPC networks (not just Google inventory).
BuySellAds
New publishers are vetted, curated, and added weekly so you’ll always have access to the best content creators.
With direct access to hundreds of high-end sites with high engagement rates, BuySellAds allows you to buy direct impressions in specific placements on sites that you choose.
Ranging from display ads, sponsored content, and custom units, BuySellAds can help you find your perfect placements at increments of 1,000 impressions.
Drill down to desired placement categories or pick multiple individual placements. It’s up to you.
Other Display PPC Options
50onRed
AdBlade
Amobee
AOL Platforms
AppNexus
Atlas Solutions
Bing Ads Content Network
BlogAds
ClickBooth
Clicksor
ConversantMedia
Direct Media Buy
Epom
Exponential
Facebook Audience Network
FutureAds
Kontextua
Pulse360
SuperLinks
TLVMedia
Tribal Fusion
Quantcast
Retargeting PPC
You got the original click, but no conversion. So how do you retarget past visitors to have them come back and finish the conversion?
Get ready to meet some different retargeting platforms that help you retarget visitors no matter where they are (outdoors not applicable just yet).
AdRoll
Reach your customers across devices, browsers, and apps with access to over 500 ad exchanges.
AdRoll helps advertisers quickly set up brand new retargeting campaigns in a snap.
With their simple interface, you can choose to retarget through regular display/content sites, or you could choose to target past visitors on Facebook or Twitter (this is what made AdRoll famous in the beginning).
You can also take advantage of AdRoll’s Dynamic Creative ads and showcase them within Facebook as well.
AdWords Remarketing
You can create different custom audiences while retargeting.
Using the AdWords interface for regular display remarketing (notice how Google calls it remarketing, not retargeting) is great when you’re already using for search and/or display.
Inside of your AdWords interface, you can create as many custom audiences as you’d like and additional targeting criteria within your remarketing ad groups.
You can also import audiences from Google Analytics that have certain criteria like time on site for example and even use Remarketing List for Search Ads (RLSA) to have new ad messages/bids on the search network.
SiteScout Retargeting
Create hidden image pixels to retarget with SiteScout.
SiteScout is a hybrid PPC channel as it can do much more than just regular PPC retargeting.
In addition to your traditional image and text retargeting ads, SiteScout also allows you to create hidden image pixels to retarget to people who’ve opened a specific email.
You can also create retargeting audiences based on certain links that they click, to then cookie their browser and retarget them later with whichever message you prefer.
Other Retargeting PPC Options
Perfect Audience
Criteo
Retargeter
Rakuten
Rubicon Project
Programmatic PPC
According to MarketingLand, programmatic advertising helps speed up the PPC campaign creation by automating the targeting process of specific audiences and demographics within your ROI goals.
In the world of PPC, this means that huge budgets are being set on “smart autopilot” to find new pockets of profitability in the online world.
Here are some of the options you have when it comes to programmatic PPC:
RocketFuel
Find out what attributes make the perfect marketing moment for each device.
RocketFuel says that it has the tools to automate your advertising so that it can learn by itself to continually improve and show progress.
With their Demand Side Platform, RocketFuel helps you find the perfect moments for your ads to show across display, video, mobile, and social channels.
They call it “Marketing In The Moment” and it helps score the likelihood of a successful action at an individual level, not an audience level.
Adobe Media Optimizer
Adobe helps you find the best mix of search, display and social ads based on your budget.
Adobe’s suite of tools is a marketer’s dream (a marketer with deep pockets).
With Dynamic Creative Optimization and programmatic functionality, Adobe Media Optimizer can help you take PPC to the next level through search, display, social, and analytics.
With many of the biggest brands using Adobe’s solutions, it’s easy to see how having one platform to handle everything makes sense.
Quantcast
Quantcast’s monitoring tools help you oversee your campaign to ensure you hit your performance goals.
Quantcast is anything but typical.
With their humongous access to countless data points, Quantcast can help you target real-time browsing behaviors with their programmatic offerings.
By using a mix of both prospecting and retargeting, Quantcast brings in big data to get the most targeted conversions with little to no wasted dollars.
Other Programmatic PPC Options
AdClarity
BRealTime
DataXu
OwnerIQ
Turn
Xaxis
Mobile/App PPC
If you’re promoting any type of mobile offer (like an app), then knowing which mobile PPC solutions are out there is absolutely vital.
From going directly through AdWords to more specific and premium ad creative and placements, mobile specific PPC advertising is here to stay.
Let’s take a look at some of your opportunities.
Kargo
Custom fonts and colors assure that advertiser or sponsored content blends in with editorial.
You could never associate the word “sexy” and “mobile ad” until you see a Kargo ad.
Not only does Kargo work directly with some invitation-only marketplaces, but their in-house creative team actually builds out your ads to comply with their and the publishers requirements.
The even claim to be able to reach 80% of all US smartphone users with unique ad twists that involve gamification, native, programmatic and more.
AirPush
Mobile advertisers can access custom design, media buying and campaign optimization.
gives mobile advertisers access to custom design, media buying, and real-time campaign optimization services that
With an uber impressive display of exclusive brand case studies, AirPush used a three-pronged approach to deliver mobile results at scale.
First, they help with the creative design aspect. Second, they help on the media buying. And lastly, their programmatic solution automatically helps optimize your campaigns by excluding audiences that aren’t performing well and doubling down on the high performers.
Through in-app and mobile site advertising, AirPush will help get to your desired conversion rate and cost per conversion goals.
iAd (Apple)
iAd makes it easy to earn money from ads in your apps and News content.
Whether you’re an advertiser or publisher, Apple iAd platform helps you monetize your app and/or find new users for your app.
If you decide to use the iAd Workbench (as Apple calls it), then you can even advertise within native Apple apps like News and Wallet and also have them show up on your target’s wrist through their Apple Watch.
Other Mobile/App PPC Options
InMobi
Millennial Media (AOL)
AdWords App Install
AdMob (Google)
LeadBolt
MobVista
Content PPC
Let’s say your goal isn’t to drive immediate conversions.
Maybe it’s to increase the readership of your blog, get more social shares, or to use content to gain trust.
If that’s the case, then you’ll love this section where we dive into content PPC channels that help you amplify your content’s reach.
Outbrain
Outbrain reaches over a half a billion people globally each month.
In its simplest form, Outbrain basically helps you promote your content via paid spots on other publisher sites.
You’ve most likely seen these Outbrain ads before below the original article, and most of them are unfortunately the sensationalist types of post. But, if you have a great twist to a story (like Dollar Shave Club) then you can turn any boring industry content into something worthy of being clicked on.
Within Outbrain, you can choose which geographic locations and devices your sponsored content should show in and on, along with custom max bids and budgets you set.
Taboola
Taboola helps people discover content they might like yet never knew existed.
Very similar to Outbrain, although Taboola has less reach.
Moz has a nice post comparing Taboola and Outbrain with different success metrics being covered from the same piece of content being promoted.
SimilarTech also has a very nice head to head comparison of the two services, ultimately declaring Taboola as the winner with more website connections than Outbrain.
Quuu
Quu will automatically send hand curated content to your Buffer.com account.
Quuu isn’t exactly a content PPC channel yet, but I would expect it to become one soon.
If you’re lucky enough to be approved as a curator, then you can essentially submit your posts to a specific category and get up to 100+ Buffer shares depending on the category for free.
The tool also helps you add new, relevant, and interesting posts to your current Buffer queues so you don’t need to spend time curating yourself.
Other Content PPC Options
Revenue
RevContent
CoPromote
Zemanta
Video PPC (aka Pay-Per-View)
Did you know that YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google?
The only problem (for Google) and opportunity for you is that not a lot of people are taking advantage of the advertising opportunities.
With cost per views still being as low as $0.01, YouTube and other video PPC channels can be a profitable source of conversions.
YouTube
If you’re not advertising on YouTube yet, you should.
It’s no secret that YouTube should be part of your PPC arsenal. The only downside is that it isn’t exactly cheap to split test video ads.
But with cheaper and cheaper options (like Fiverr.com), you really have no excuse to not get your feet wet.
With options like in-stream and in-display video ads (and more to come), YouTube gives you complete control to target channels, individual videos, or regular demographics like you would with an AdWords Display campaign.
Facebook Video Ads
Target people based on their interests, behaviors, age, gender and location.
Just like traditional Facebook ads, you can create video ads just as easily by targeting your specific audience and add in surrounding text too.
With Facebook Video Ads, you can also track the viewing metrics like you would with YouTube video ads to see how you can improve the performance of a video if it only gets viewed 25% of it’s entirety for example.
Facebook even touts that video ads can get up to 11X larger images in people’s news feeds and the cost per video play can be up to 5.5X less than a traditional Facebook image ad.
SlideShare
Add videos to your SlideShare to benefit from the ads in those videos.
Did you know it’s now possible to add video to your SlideShare uploads?
And in addition to that, you can actually embed lead collection forms to that SlideShare by creating a new campaign with a total budget and geographic targeting.
Just like more and more social media outlets are incorporating video (like Pinterest’s Promoted Pins), SlideShare’s Pro Account allows you to upload videos within your slide deck and adds in viewer statistics too.
Other Video PPC Options
Pinterest
Optimatic
Instagram
Vine (soon to come)
Periscope (soon to come)
Pay Per Call PPC
Does your business live and die by phone calls?
Wouldn’t it be amazing to only pay for phone calls, and not clicks or impressions? That’s exactly what pay per call promises.
And with the rise of mobile continuing to grow, not thinking about generating phone leads would seem foolish. Here are the top option you have when it comes to paying per phone call:
RingPartner
Need phone leads? Give RingPartner a try.
Promising only to have advertisers pay for quality calls, RingPartner helps connect a business in need of phone leads from the source generating those calls.
Pairing their service with a call intelligence tool like Invoca can help you put your inbound call efforts on autopilot while tracking and improving your sales reps and other PPC efforts as it can double as conversion research as well.
YellowPages
Create a simple ad to attract new customers and only pay when customers call you from your ad.
Trust me, I thought the YellowPages were dead as well. But then I saw that they actually offer a pay per call solution.
With a huge network of publishers that include UrbanSpoon, Dex, and Yahoo! (among others), YellowPages states that you can create your own ads through their platform and only pay when your phone rings.
CallX
CallX generates calls for its advertisers through search engine, social medial, Email and more.
CallX is a marketplace that allows you to buy and sell phone leads.
By setting up your own criteria and the types of calls you want, CallX can sell the phone leads to you in batches as low as 10 or as high as 1000.
Even though the buying phone leads has been alive since the boom of radio and print advertising, CallX has carved out a nice little spot for themselves with the continuing rise of mobile usage.
Other Pay Per Call PPC Options
LiveTransfers
Affiliate PPC
Want other people to sell your stuff?
If you’re okay with paying fair commissions, then affiliate PPC may be your new favorite PPC channel.
Selling info-products, SaaS solutions, or physical goods, then consider using one of these channels today.
It’s how Brain Host grew to massive numbers and has presented at multiple marketing conferences on how they cracked the affiliate code.
ClickBank
Let ClickBank do the selling for you.
ClickBank is known as the biggest affiliate/commission PPC channel out there. You have a product and you give other people the option to sell it for you.
What your new army of sellers care about revolve around two things:
Their commission from each sale
The vertical your offer is in
You’ll usually find that weight loss products do well when it comes to affiliate PPC, but you can also find great success with your specific product or service.
You can even see the best performing offers to get ideas on how to package your own offer.
CJ Affiliate
<img class="wp-image-4867 size-medium" src="https://klientboost.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Cj-Affiliate-600x237.png" alt="Cj Affiliate" width="600" height="237" srcset="https://klientboost.com/wp-content/uploads/20