When it comes to creating a campaign in pay per click advertising programs such as Google Adwords, there will usually be an option to choose between using the search network, display network or both search and display network. This can a difficult choice to make that is especially if you don’t know what will be best for your campaign. For this reason, here is the main pros and cons to search networks and display networks in PPC.
 

Search Network

The search network basically allows you to bid for ad placement on search results above, below or to the side of the organic results. It has both a few advantages and disadvantages:

• The search network allows you to include ad extensions into your advert, which are a great way of increasing the click through rate of your advert as well as making it more relevant to the web user by displaying more helpful information.
• Search network allows you to take advantage of search partners, such as AOL and WSJ. This can help you reach an audience that potentially has a high conversion rate.
• The search network has lots of competition. Therefore, you should not be surprised if you find that your advert adopts a slightly higher CPC to display adverts.

Display Network

Display network is the term used for adverts that are shown on publisher websites of PPC programs such as Google Adsense. Again, it has both pros and cons:

• With the display network, you have the bonus of using image adverts, which will give you more freedom to advertise whatever you want to advertise.
• Display adverts can work better depending on the quality of website you advertise on. For example, the higher the page rank, the better quality web users on that site (and most likely the higher the cost per click you will have to pay).
• This also works to a con in the sense that if you cannot afford to adopt a high CPC to keep up with competition, you will naturally have your advert advertised on the poorer quality websites resulting in a lower conversion rate.

 
Ultimately, the best way to find out which network is best for you is to try both out and see which performs better with identical campaigns. There is always the option of using both search and display which is the preferred option for some advertisers since this gives the widest audience. However, from learning the above, you may choose to use one by itself over the other.