system (sort of a bad joke for those that live in the United



States, but many other countries...most notably Japan...have an

even more acute problem), but this baby boom is revolutionizing

the way that pay per click advertising is being spread across the

Internet.

One of the early participants in this pay per click baby boom was

Google, with its AdSense program. With this program, Google

shares pay per click revenue with a huge number of individual

partner websites that carry a few pay per click ads that are

distributed by Google. In essence, this creates a whole bunch of

little pay per click locations (websites) throughout the Internet

and hence the term "pay per click baby boom".

Conceptually, programs like AdSense are similar to what the

computer hardware folks refer to a distributed processing.

Instead of trying to draw everyone to a large pay per click

search engine site, little groups of pay per click ads are spread

widely across thousands of locations (websites) all over the

Internet.

Actually, this distributed processing or propagation technique is

not limited to pay per click advertising. For example, Amazon

uses a similar arrangement (called Amazon Associates) to sell the

products it carries on amazon.com and ClickBank has a sales

program called CBAdwords which operates in a similar fashion.

According my trusty Ouija board, it seems likely that most

commercial hubs on the Internet will be shifting to this

propagation concept as time progresses...all of those individual

partner websites that carry the message/proposition will

constitute the vast army of worker ants that keep the queen ant

alive and healthy.

From a pay per click marketing perspective, these programs make

brilliant use of leverage while providing highly targeted

prospects for the paying advertiser.

There are, of course, some interesting things that occur as a

result of all of this stuff. For example, consider what I call

the "cross fertilization effect": Suppose a person goes to

yahoo.com and performs a search that leads them to one of my

websites that happens carry Google AdSense ads and that visitor

then clicks on one of those ads...the net result is that Yahoo

natural search provided Google pay per click with some revenue!

Aren't these fun times that we're living in?

As these programs continue to proliferate, the individual

webmaster needs to exercise a little restraint and avoid the

temptation to go overboard by plastering these ads all over your

website and thereby diluting your own primary message/proposition

and confusing your hard earned visitor. When properly used,

these ads are just ancillary or complementary content that you

are providing to enhance the information and opportunities that

you are providing to your visitor...if something happens to

strike a responsive chord with your visitor, you might make a

little pay per click money.

If properly used, these propagation programs can result in the

classical "win-win" situation. However, if you over do it, this

can quickly turn into a loss for you (the individual webmaster)

and a win for your pay per click partners that are distributing

the ads. As in many things, moderation is important.

The dynamic search engine marketing industry continues to evolve

as users began to take advantage of the steady stream of new

features, tools and innovations provided by the ever increasing

number of search engines offering quality search results (it's

not all about Google anymore). The evolutionary time line for

Internet marketing continues to run at warp speed.

An example of previous evolutionary periods (which by now may

almost seem prehistoric) would be the emergence of pay-per-click

advertising and the corresponding rise of search-marketing firms

specializing in AdWords and Overture. As long as there are methods

for finding and retrieving information in digital databases by

using keywords or similar attributes, there will be a

search-marketing industry. How that industry operates in the

future depends on how the search engines operate and how consumer

tendencies evolve.

It's a constant sea of change, but the good things just keep on

getting better! Stay alert, and light on your feet, and the

opportunities will just keep on coming your way.

The above are just some observations from "the peanut gallery",

but I don't think I'm far off the mark about where things are

heading. With that, I'm off the soapbox and wishing you

success in whatever you do online!