Google AdWords al­tern­at­ives: the best platforms for effective SEA

Although it might be the case that as an internet user you don’t use Google’s search engine, it is still highly likely that you will end up using YouTube (part of Google since 2006), the Chrome web browser (created in 2008), or even the mobile operating system Android (released in 2008). The fact that Google and its sub­si­di­ar­ies are so prevalent online makes the company's platforms and ap­plic­a­tions in­valu­able to ad­vert­isers.

Google rarely publishes exact figures, but it is estimated that every second the internet giant receives a minimum of 64,000 search queries. Many of these requests then display ad­vert­ise­ments to users as part of the search results. These Google Ads are con­trolled by the company's own ad­vert­ising system. This makes the Google AdWords platform one of the most important marketing channels worldwide. Ad­di­tion­ally, there are ads that are displayed on many other websites via the Google Display Network.

However, this does not mean that other platforms and search engines should be ignored. On the one hand, certain platforms (e.g. the social media giant Facebook) allow you to target users very spe­cific­ally through various methods. On the other hand, users who decide against Google are also depriving them­selves of access to a huge amount of potential customers. But there is def­in­itely no harm in con­sid­er­ing some of the al­tern­at­ives to Google AdWords.

There are many different ways to promote your brand and products online. In addition to paid places in the search results of other search providers, AdWords al­tern­at­ives can also give you the op­por­tun­ity to build up in­ter­est­ing col­lab­or­a­tions with social media marketing or content marketing. Fur­ther­more, there is the wide­spread dis­tri­bu­tion of classic display ads.

Bing, Mi­crosoft's search engine, is Google's biggest and main com­pet­it­or. Although Bing's market share is re­l­at­ively small, it is still quite con­sid­er­able when compared with other Google al­tern­at­ives. This could be of great interest to some ad­vert­isers, as it means they can reach a re­l­at­ively large target group (in 2017 Bing re­portedly had a market share of over 30 percent in the US), including many mobile users from Microsoft. At the same time, there is much less com­pet­i­tion than with Google.

As with Google, Bing Ads also operates via a bidding system when it comes to keywords. However, instead of booking an ad in the search engine, you place a bid on an ad space for a specific search term. Each time a user performs a search, an automatic auction is held on the ad spaces. This form of ad­vert­ising space auction is known as 'real time bidding' (RTB) because the system makes the decision regarding who wins within a matter of mil­li­seconds, i.e. virtually in real time.

However, as Bing tends to have far fewer ad­vert­isers in one place, the bids are also lower. This could be es­pe­cially in­ter­est­ing for smaller companies that want to advertise with highly-popular search terms. As an ad­vert­iser, you only have to pay if someone actually clicks on the ad – this principle is called ‘pay per click’ (PPC). On top of this, Bing also has an in­ter­est­ing dis­tri­bu­tion network: Since the search engine is part of the 'Yahoo! Bing' network, ads are also displayed in the Yahoo! search engine.

When it comes to ad formats, Bing differs little from its huge com­pet­it­or. In addition to the usual text ads presented directly in the list in the form of (selected) search results, other texts with links also appear next to the actual results. These are il­lus­trated ad­vert­ise­ments in the form of shop offers. Bing also displays the price of the product as part of these il­lus­trated ad­vert­ise­ments.

The longest serving of all the search engines also has its own ad­vert­ising program. However, it should be noted that Yahoo! Gemini has only been around since 2014, and has a special focus on mobile search engine ad­vert­ising. Like Bing, Yahoo! is lagging far behind Google when it comes to user numbers. Therefore both of these AdWords al­tern­at­ives offer a simple service, which allows you to transfer data over to Google. Yahoo! Gemini also makes it easy to create new ads and campaigns, since it has an operating system that is very similar to that of the big com­pet­it­ors.

It's possible to define target groups re­l­at­ively precisely: you can choose from criteria like location, gender, age group, and areas of interest. You also have the choice between the standard display and video format. With Google on the other hand, this is only possible in com­bin­a­tion with their sub­si­di­ary, YouTube. Yahoo! Gemini will show ad­vert­ise­ments that feature video material on both their own, as well as partner sites.

In addition to being par­tic­u­larly good at dis­play­ing all ad formats on mobile devices, Yahoo! Gemini also scores points with its native ads and its ability to play a company's own network content anywhere. Native ads are played out as content within the news streams of different platforms. Yahoo! itself is now perceived less as a search engine and more as a news platform. On top of this, Flickr (photo community) and Tumblr (blogging platform) also belong to Yahoo! and are in­teg­rated into the network in which Gemini dis­trib­utes ads.

Since 2017, Yahoo! has also been part of Oath, a co­oper­a­tion between the search engine provider AOL, under the lead­er­ship of parent company Verizon. Since AOL has also evolved from being an internet provider to a content provider, including online media such as the Huff­ing­ton Post and Tech­Crunch, the ad­vert­ising network has ex­per­i­enced a dramatic expansion. However the situation is different when it comes to the co­oper­a­tion with Bing; while Bing Ads are also displayed in Yahoo! search results, it is not the case the other way around. This means that ads you create with Yahoo! Gemini will not appear in Bing's search results.

The payment model remains the same: ads are offered and a payment is only made once a user actually clicks on the ad (PPC). Like with Bing, the costs are much lower than the market leader, making Yahoo! a real al­tern­at­ive to Google AdWords. However, it is difficult to predict whether the return on in­vest­ment will improve. Due to the lower number of users, it is likely that there will be far fewer leads i.e. potential customers generated. On top of this, you should not un­der­es­tim­ate the problem of click fraud, re­gard­less of the platform on which PPC is used.

Amazon is becoming a more and more important company in the marketing world. As the range of goods on the platform (including Amazon Mar­ket­place) becomes more extensive, the im­port­ance of the local search function is also growing. In order to find products, most customers use the search bar and sub­sequently receive sorted search results. Nowadays, many people also use Amazon to search for offers and product prices. This has turned Amazon into a very important field for both SEO and SEA. Given that the e-commerce platform now seems to have a market with numerous com­pet­it­ors for virtually every product, it is of utmost im­port­ance to be visible to customers there.

With Amazon, there are also different ad types. While sponsored products and headline search ads are dependent on keywords, the product display ads are displayed according to the interests of the specific user, or else for certain other products. This means that you can direct potential customers to your product page, either by spe­cify­ing a par­tic­u­lar area of interest or by having your ad appear as a sponsored entry on another product page. The two ad formats are based on search terms that appear either at the top of the search results (headline search ads), or else at the bottom (sponsored products). Sponsored products may also appear on the article pages of other products.

Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) is something which is available to all users who are re­gistered with Vendor Central, Advantage Central, or Vendor Express. It's also possible to gain access if you are a marketing spe­cial­ist who is rep­res­ent­ing an Amazon seller. However, this also means that it is necessary to become an Amazon partner to use the plat­form's marketing services. As a so-called seller, i.e. as a third-party supplier who sells his goods in­de­pend­ently via the mar­ket­place, you are not permitted to use the extensive marketing op­por­tun­it­ies on offer. In this case you are limited to booking only seller central sponsored products and headline search ads.

Amazon's marketing services, as with the other AdWords al­tern­at­ives, have a system wherein ad­vert­ising places are assigned via auction. The highest bidder is awarded the spot, but also here it is the case that, as an ad­vert­iser, you only pay if someone actually goes ahead and clicks on the link. Whether the customer even­tu­ally buys your ad­vert­ised product is ir­rel­ev­ant to whether you pay or not; you will always have to pay. This means that it doesn't make much sense to invest the ad­vert­ising budget in products that have received a poor customer review. While these items will still be viewed, they will most likely not be bought.

Fur­ther­more, Amazon also has another marketing program on offer. With the Amazon Ad­vert­ising Platform (AAP), which is managed by Amazon Media Group (AMG), the online retail giant offers its partners some more typical online marketing op­por­tun­it­ies. With the likes of display ads (e.g. ad­vert­ising banners) you are primarily focusing on brand awareness. Here you have the option of either or­gan­iz­ing your own campaigns or using AMG's help – however, in this case, you should have an annual marketing budget of at least £7,000. For any merchant, the advantage of using AAP remains the large col­lec­tion of user data that the or­gan­iz­a­tion has in its pos­ses­sion.

This is the reason why Amazon's targeting methods are par­tic­u­larly effective. The online retailer knows its users very well and knows which products they are in­ter­ested in. What did the user look at, but not buy? What was the last thing he or she bought? Which product types are of par­tic­u­lar interest to them? Also, thanks to the emergence of Amazon’s voice assistant, Echo, there are likely to be even more options for ad­vert­ising in the future.

Facebook is not only a space that makes social media marketing possible, the world's leader in social media actually earns the majority of its revenue from the sale of ad­vert­ising space. In contrast to viral marketing campaigns, which are (in principle) free of charge, the im­ple­ment­a­tion of ad­vert­ising here can be quite expensive. The social media platform offers both mixed ad­vert­ising formats, as well as the more tra­di­tion­al display ads. The former is at­tain­able if you sponsor your created content. Through the paid boost, Facebook dis­trib­utes the post you wish to promote to more users than merely those who happen to follow your company profile.

On the other hand, ad­vert­ise­ments provide you with a few more options. Here you have the choice of using text, photo, video, or even op to choose the more complex carousel or slideshow options. A carousel displays several photos or video in one ad­vert­ise­ment. A slideshow, on the other hand, is an animation of photos and text. This tends to achieve better results than a normal video display, es­pe­cially for users with a poorer internet con­nec­tions (e.g. mobile users). Facebook also offers canvas for smart­phones. This is a format that opens a full screen scrol­lable display when the smart­phone screen is touched.

Facebook allows you to use ad­vert­ising campaigns to generate leads, increase brand awareness, and/or encourage users to engage in specific in­ter­ac­tions. It is also possible to define your target very precisely. Just like with Google and Amazon, Facebook knows its users very well. The social media giant is generally very aware of the surfing behaviour of its community; including hobbies, friends, and general interests. Fur­ther­more, Facebook is in no way a stan­dalone platform. The Facebook group (and ad­vert­ising network) now also includes the photo sharing community Instagram, Facebook’s own instant messenger, as well as the Facebook Audience Network. The latter is a network of mobile apps who col­lab­or­ate with Facebook and display ads.

On Facebook it is also auctions that determine which ads are to be displayed. As is generally customary, it is not just the highest bid that is the decisive factor. Facebook also takes into account the expected ef­fect­ive­ness of the ad­vert­ise­ment, as well as the actual quality of it. This means that it is not possible to win auctions with a high ad­vert­ising budget alone. It is also crucial that your ad­vert­ise­ments have a proven past record of achieving good results.

As you create your ad campaign, depending on what or whom you are targeting, you can choose what it is you want to pay for. Is your bid based on clicks (CPC), per thousand im­pres­sions (CPM), or based around Likes, Actions, or Con­ver­sions (CPA)? This means you can adapt your bids to fit your own in­di­vidu­al marketing strategy. It goes without saying that Facebook also makes it possible to measure the success of an ad­vert­ising campaign.

Even though social media is becoming in­creas­ingly important in the ac­quis­i­tion of in­form­a­tion, a lot of content is still being generated on more tra­di­tion­al websites. For example, more and more people are reading news­pa­pers and magazines online. And these users are now ac­cus­tomed to receiving sug­ges­tions for further con­tri­bu­tions after they have finished reading an article. In fact, many readers expect to receive sug­ges­tions at the end of every text that they read. This is where Outbrain comes into play.

Outbrain is a so-called content dis­tri­bu­tion network, which makes it an in­ter­est­ing al­tern­at­ive to Google AdWords. It sees itself as a company that aims to be the link between busi­nesses and pub­lish­ers. The general idea is that instead of more tra­di­tion­al ad­vert­ise­ments (Display Ads), companies create editorial content that could be of interest to readers. Selected articles can also be in­teg­rated into other webpages, usually more popular ones. Naturally, the operator of the site charges a fee for this. This means that not every single ad­vert­iser has to sign a contract with every publisher. Instead, there are networks like Outbrain that do this for them.

Outbrain provides a widget that website operators can install on their re­spect­ive sites. As a result, visitors to the website are also suggested articles which are not found on the same website, but instead on that of the ad­vert­iser. By clicking on the headline or the thumbnail, the user is directed to the specific article. Ad­vert­isers only incur costs when users actually click on the links (CPC). A company sets out a budget for this in advance, and once this is used up, the articles are no longer dis­trib­uted.

If you do opt for Outbrain, there are further benefits that you can enjoy. According to Outbrain, 50 al­gorithms help to display content that really appeals to the customer. These al­gorithms look at the context sur­round­ing the current article, the behaviour of the user group, as well as the surfing behavior of the user. Outbrain uses cookies for the latter of these, however, they can also be disabled via opt-out. Fur­ther­more, Outbrain tries to un­der­stand when the relevance of an article is no longer given because, for example, if it is no longer up to date or relevant. Such articles then no longer appear in the widgets.

When creating a campaign, you select both the title and preview image. What this means is that the title of the link, as displayed by the widget, does not ne­ces­sar­ily have to match the title of the linked article. It also becomes es­pe­cially important if you are also sim­ul­tan­eously pursuing a SEO campaign with your content. The keyword that appears in the headline may work well for search engines but, unlike an ad, doesn't need to invite clicks. Once this step is complete, you can then decide on a budget and the CPC, which will define how you compete in the auction – Outbrain also auctions ad­vert­ising spots.

It is also possible to specify the time period (if you do not want the campaign to run until the end of the budget) as well as the target group. To do this, you need to specify the locations where your content is to be on display and the devices it is to be displayed on. An in­form­a­tion field next to your spe­cific­a­tions indicates the expected range of coverage. With just these few settings, your campaign is ready to go online. Success is easily monitored. Ad­di­tion­ally, A/B tests help to identify the best strategy.

It is also possible to promote only one article within a par­tic­u­lar campaign, while still adding different images and headlines. This can be done to figure out which com­bin­a­tions work and which do not ne­ces­sar­ily generate clicks. However, this link op­tim­isa­tion brings about one of the biggest problems for Outbrain, and other similar providers; clickbait. Instead of actually dis­play­ing relevant content, readers are en­cour­aged to clicks with promising link titles and thumb­nails. However, they are then ul­ti­mately brought to a page that contains mostly just ad­vert­ising.

By es­tab­lish­ing clear guidelines, Outbrain tries to coun­ter­act this behaviour. Along with sexual or illegal content, links that are purely for ad­vert­ising purposes or have mis­lead­ing titles are also pro­hib­ited. However, enforcing these rules can be difficult. The fact that there isn't more vigorous action being taken against clickbait is probably also down to the pub­lish­ers. Online media companies are largely financed by Outbrain or one of its com­pet­it­ors.

Similar to Outbrain, Taboola is a content dis­tri­bu­tion network, making it another in­ter­est­ing al­tern­at­ive to Google AdWords. At best, the dif­fer­ences between Taboola and its rival Outbrain are very minimal. Creating a campaign works just like with the latter: In just three steps (selecting and cus­tom­ising content, choosing reach and budget, entering account in­form­a­tion) you can get your content marketing campaign online. One thing that is different, however, is the choice of content. While Outbrain only allows actual articles, Taboola also allows you to promote landing pages as well as entire websites. But according to the guidelines, linking to a website's homepage or directory is not allowed. Links to forum posts are also not permitted. On top of this, Taboola naturally prohibits content deemed to be fraud­u­lent, offensive, and/or illegal.

Regarding the network of dis­tri­bu­tion channels of both providers, there is no sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fer­ence when it comes to quantity or quality. But if you wish to be present across all major online media, you will need to use both providers sim­ul­tan­eously. This is because some sites cooperate with Outbrain and others with Taboola.

When it comes to narrowing down a target group, with Taboola (and Outbrain as well) there are a lot of lim­it­a­tions. This is quite a strong contrast to Google, Facebook, or Amazon. The reason for this is that content dis­tri­bu­tion networks are only in­ter­me­di­ar­ies. This means that it is not possible to collect as much user data as huge online companies, which require users to disclose a great deal of in­form­a­tion.

According to Taboola, they currently have thirty employees re­spons­ible for pre­vent­ing fake news and clickbait. However, it should also be noted that Taboola's founder, Adam Singolda, places high value on freedom of ex­pres­sion. This leads him to justify a lot of what is dis­sem­in­ated via the content dis­tri­bu­tion network. Although the general concept is still enjoying relative amounts of success today, some pub­lish­ers have now begun to un­der­stand that clickbait articles are having a negative effect on their repu­ta­tion. This has led many to rely on their own solutions. At the end of the day, it makes this AdWords al­tern­at­ive only in­ter­est­ing for those with re­l­at­ively serious ad­vert­ising messages.

Quantcast is a provider that primarily evaluates big data for the ad­vert­ising industry. The US-based AdWords al­tern­at­ive can be seen mainly as a tracking service provider that collects data from par­ti­cip­at­ing websites, and similar to Google Analytics, uses it to compile stat­ist­ics. Not only does Quantcast provide demo­graph­ic data analysis for a par­tic­u­lar website, but it also has the ability to track users across multiple webpages and create highly detailed profiles. Users of Quantcast Measure (the name of the analysis tool) par­tic­u­larly like how you can compare your own page with that of the com­pet­i­tion – a feature you won't find on Google Analytics.

This knowledge of user groups also makes Quantcast a viable partner when it comes to the dis­tri­bu­tion of display ads. Just like Google AdWords and the other al­tern­at­ives, Quantcast offers real time ad­vert­ising (RTA). This means that when a user accesses a website where Quantcast ads are displayed, an auction is held in a short space of time. There are several factors, e.g. which target is being bid on, that help the system to determine which ad is to be displayed to the user at that time.