Before you make any assumptions, it is clear that the best form of online advertising is through Pay Per Click marketing. The ease of use and cost-efficiency makes it be used by millions on programs such as Google AdWords. PPC is the preferred method of advertising. 
However, if some unknown reason, you want to try out different forms of advertising online, to see if your conversion rate and success rate increases, you will want to know what other type of advertisement you may want to go with. There are many different ways to advertise online with this article including the most used and recognised.
In-Text Advertising
Similar to PPC contextual advertising, in-text adverts work by including the advertisement inside links on keywords in your articles. The keywords chosen to link as advertisement relate to the advert e.g. the keyword ‘Google Analytics‘ would have advertisement related to analysing online stats etc…
The CPC for in-text adverts are extremely low with the highest CPC at around $0.10. As well as that, the CTR is through the roof compared to other forms of advertising. For this reason, if you are an advertiser, try it out. However, as a publisher, like me, you will find that in-text advertising might not make as much money as you think.
Banner Ads
This form of advertising works through selling advertising space on your website for a consistent period of time (the typical time being 30 days). The most recognised banner advertising network is BuySellAds () which have thousands of advertisers and publishers buying and selling banner ads daily. However, if you are going to buy advertising space, be cautious what websites you buy from. I once tried it out and paid $10 for a 125×125 advertising space on a blogger templates blog getting more than 200,000 views/month. My CTR was 0.01%. I think that says it all…
At the same time, there are many websites that offer great deals on banner ads. You just have to make sure you choose the right website for what you want to promote.
Social Networking Advertising
With the boom in social media from Facebook and Twitter, advertising on social websites is another great way to publicise your product/service or whatever you want. You can buy a tweet (again, using BuySellAds), have a recommendation on Facebook or become a promoted trend on Twitter. I do see social advertisement becoming more popular as many people still don’t see it as advertisement which makes the CTR very high. This is the case with promoted trends on Twitter. Twitter show users what is trending in a list. However, at the top, is a promoted trend which is a form ofadvertisement. Many people still tweet ‘Why is ________ trending?!’ It’s not! It’s a form of advertisement that you obviously can’t see!
Email Marketing
Another good way of advertising. Promoting through email is cheap and easy to do. However, with many people using email marketing as a form of spam, more people are giving email marketing the stereotype of spam. This is not good as people will just delete the emails assuming they are spam, if they haven’t been placed in your spam box or junk email box already.
Affiliate Marketing
I left this last as this is probably the most debatable alternative to PPC. Affiliate marketing works through having adverts such as PPC or banner ads on a webpage. The reader then clicks on the advert. Only once a success conversion has been taken place will the advertiser pay the publisher, usually a percentage of what has just been earned. That probably sounds very complicated to you so I’ll make it clear in a bullet point list:
- There is an affiliate advert on a page – This can look like anything, from a link to a banner.
- A reader clicks on the affiliate advert  – Affiliate does not work through CPC (cost per click) but CPC (cost per conversion). Therefore, the advertiser will not have to pay the publisher for that click.
- The reader buys something on the landing page to make it a conversion – Only once a conversion has happened will the advertiser have to pay out. If, what he was promoting, was a product or service that the reader bought, he would generally give a percentage of the earnings to the publisher.
The benefit to affiliate marketing is that you don’t get click fraud. They don’t have to pay out to publishers for invalid clicks. With invalid clicks potentially adding up to 30% of all clicks, it gives advertisers serious consideration to use affiliate methods of advertising.
My view is still the same though. Google have the best technology to identify invalid clicks. Yes, 30% of all clicks may be invalid (not actual numbers, just estimation). Yet, Google probably don’t make the advertisers pay for most of them if not any. PPC is the way forward in online advertisement. It is used by millions of people all around the world. I don’t know about you, but millions of people can’t be using the wrong form of advertisement, right? I hope not!
