Targeted

CHAPTER 2

Search Engine Marketing

The ability to search at lightning speed through digital content is perhaps the most distinctive innovation that computers have put at users’ and advertisers’ fingertips. Paid-search advertising, an important part of search engine marketing (SEM), really is new and different. It’s like harnessing a comet-one that lands almost in the instant it takes off, and there you are, with your ad, right at the comet’s landing pad. Where search is concerned, computers are dazzling, and they make previous promotional media seem pretty dim and dawdling. As tireless, obedient, warp-speed search engines, computers behave like genies.

Here’s how it works. Search engine advertisements are purchased from search engine companies ...