Google Adwords offers pay per click (PPC) advertising as well as site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads.

PROS

  1. •is the largest and the best online service – ads can be seen by 80% of all Internet users

  2. •highly targetable

  3. •local, national, and international distribution

  4. •reasonable cost per click (CPC) prices

  5. •highest traffic (dominates search industry)

  6. •offers the most ad options

  7. •no minimum bid

  8. •accommodates images

CONS

  1. •restrictive quality score

  2. •competitive

  3. •becoming more expensive

Yahoo! Search Marketing offers high-quality, high-volume traffic.

Marchex adhere is a new pay per click advertising channel that delivers cost-effective access to top search, local and premium publisher websites.

PROS

  1. •high volume of traffic

  2. •minimum bid is 5 cents

  3. •best of the second-tier marketing platforms

  4. •uses other ad companies (like Adbrite and Yahoo) to display their ads, saving you time and money

CONS

  1. •limited targeting features

  2. •low-quality traffic

  3. •new and thus unproven in the industry

Stumbleupon is a web browser plug-in that allows users to discover and rate web pages, photos, and videos. You can pay to ensure that your site is stumbled.

PROS

  1. •high volume of traffic

  2. •cost efficient at only 5 cents per visitor

  3. •effective viral marketing

  4. •matches your site category with stumblers’ interests

  5. •ideal for trendsetting or trend-compliant websites

CONS

  1. •traffic is not very targetable

  2. •websites must grab user interest within a few seconds

  3. •maximum of 500 viewers per day

  4. •not ideal for e-commerce websites

LinkWorth is one of the web’s largest and most innovative marketing portals. Their products consist of text link ads, paid blog reviews, in-content pay per click ads, rotating text ads, hosted content pages, and many more.

PROS

  1. •Buy ads and increase traffic, visibility and search positions

  2. •Huge inventory of publishers growing daily

CONS

  1. •limited traffic

  2. •takes months to see results

PROS

  1. •target user based on their interests

  2. •ads can include images

  3. •great demographic targeting

  4. •massive user base

Facebook Ads are a brand new service offered by this amazingly popular social networking site. The service allows you to target your user base based on their interests

CONS

  1. •fairly costly because only 1 ad is shown at a time

  2. •still new and unproven

PROS

  1. •is the second-largest online ad provider

  2. •offers high-quality traffic

  3. •offers the most traffic, with 47 million users a day

CONS

  1. •limited targeting features

  2. •competitive

  3. •more expensive than Google

  4. •has a minimum bid of 10 cents

Mircosoft adCenter offers high-quality traffic but the traffic levels are still low.

PROS

  1. •targeting by demographics available

  2. •can acquire traffic partners as prominent as AOL or Yahoo to increase volume to paid search advertisers

  3. •high-quality, very targetable traffic

CONS

  1. •traffic volume is tiny compared to Google

  2. •expensive