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The Internet is now the world’s largest communication and distribution network. Consumer behavior has changed rapidly over the last few years, and the Internet has become many people’s primary source of information and entertainment. As a result of this change in behavior, marketing needs to adapt to appeal to the digital consumer. Whereas ten years ago successful brands and companies were those that could afford to shout the loudest, in today’s world, marketing is about having conversations with the consumer in a much more precise way, and this is why online marketing is so powerful.

In the midst of an economic downturn, marketing budgets are under increasing pressure, and the need for the kind of hyper-accountability that online search marketing can offer has become a business imperative. Clients and advertising agencies are looking for scale, targeting, measurability, adaptability, and low-entry costs from their marketing activities.
Unlike during previous slowdowns, today our economy is digital. As the downturn bites, more and more consumers will use the Web to research purchases and find ways of saving money. This is a major opportunity for agencies; working closely with their clients, they can use digital advertising to deliver powerful analysis of consumer trends and adapt their strategies to reflect consumer demand.

AdWords is Google’s online advertising program, which enables advertisers to reach potential customers who are interested in their products and services. Advertisers use our online tools to create ads, decide which search terms (we call them keywords) they would like their ads to show against, decide how much they are willing to pay for each click on their ad, select the geographical areas in which they would like their ads to appear, and set daily spending budgets.
Many traditional media budgets have already been committed for 2009, but advertisers can still use digital media to assess and optimize the effectiveness of their offline spend. Online advertising can help marketers track the effectiveness of their offline campaigns by monitoring users’ changing search behavior. Search campaigns support and complement the branding or call-to-action messaging of television, print, radio and outdoor campaigns. And, using the free tools within their accounts, agencies can measure the effectiveness of their online campaigns, monitoring how often their ads have been shown against which searches, how often people have clicked on them, and more.
With search marketing, there is very little wastage, since ads are only seen by users searching for related products, and advertisers are in complete control of their costs. Its three key benefits are:
• Affordability: The structure of AdWords is specifically designed to give advertisers control over their level of spending, and advertisers can set a daily budget.
• Reach: Online marketing connects customers to companies when they need them most, when they are searching for information related to an advertiser’s product or service.
• Measurability: Online search marketing replaces guesswork with actual performance data. This enables advertisers to target users precisely, pay only for positive results, and stay firmly in charge of costs.
With these benefits in mind, agencies, clients and business users are becoming more and more intrigued about how to set up an online advertising account.
AdWords features an automated, user-friendly sign-up process that enables advertisers to implement campaigns that can go live in 15 minutes or less. Web site owners choose keywords that will trigger their ads, and their ads will only show when a user types in a related search. For example, a flower shop in Dubai might be interested in these keywords: flowers Dubai; flower shop in UAE; Dubai flowers and vases; flower delivery; local flowers; Valentine’s Day gifts; Mother’s Day gifts. The advertiser can choose any relevant search terms, and Google provides tools that help suggest keywords.
The benefit of this system is that the advertiser only pays if a user clicks on an ad. No click means no payment. The Web site owners have complete control over their costs because they decide how much they are willing to spend per click. There is no minimum or maximum; the service’s online auction system means you may offer Google 50 fils per click, and your competitor might offer 1 dirham. If you cannot outbid your competitor, his search ad will come first, while yours will come second.
Our “organic” results appear below the users’ queries in the “Search results” box. These results are determined solely by computer algorithm, and are entirely unrelated to the “sponsored links” or paid-for ads, that appear sometimes in tinted areas of the page directly above and to the right of the organic results.
To generate these sponsored links, advertisers must first create a text-based ad made up of a snappy headline, a further two lines of text explaining what is on offer, and a link which directs customers to their Web site. They then choose a list of keywords that will trigger their ad. Finally, the advertiser decides the maximum price they are willing to pay for each keyword. This is done by online auction, with advertisers that pay more generally appearing above those that pay less.
The ranking of Google’s “sponsored links” is determined by a combination of the price paid for the ad (the cost per click) and the quality of the ad itself, or how many people have found that ad useful in the past (its click-through rate).
– Husni Kuffash is the UAE country manager for Google.

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