Now let us think about the old way of advertising. You would pay money down to a company who would place your ad. The company showing your ad would be paid according to the length of time you wanted to run it. The exposure you get is nothing to do with what you pay the company.

There were a number of options. News media, TV, radio and website promotions were just a few that could be used by advertisers. Then somebody came up with a bright idea. Of course some online ads were better than others and gave far more views. For example advertising on a busy website would give your ad many views. They developed a concept that paid the website owner and advertiser.

If you raised prices for the advertiser you would risk losing customers. In fact it could also be detrimental to the credibility of your business. Customers and sales would be lost and your competitors will start to get the edge on you.

Business might not pick up and your site's reputation would suffer. Enter the idea of pay per click advertising. The advertiser writes a small ad based on a good performing keyword. Then they submit it to the search engines, the ad will come up when its keyword is searched for. Every time a searcher clicks through on the ad the advertiser will pay a small fee to the search engine. This means both advertisers and host make money.

When the search engines saw the potential of this idea they decided to develop it. To get better placements, advertisers were invited to bid higher. The advertiser with the highest bid won the best placement, this gave their ads better exposure. Both search engines and advertisers increased their profits.

There is a tendency to ignore the other pay per click engines and rely only on Google and Google Adwords. But it is always good to know that there are alternatives. Some of the more well known ones are Microsoft Adcenter, Yahoo Search and Search Feed. In order to turn a profit it would be wise for marketers to try out alternative engines apart from Google and Google Adwords.

It is wise to use as many different tactics for gaining traffic as you can. Using different pay per click engines will help you to expand your business and increase your profits.