Whilst not exactly being the death toll of traditional forms of advertising, online forms such as Google Adwords pay per click advertising has revolutionised they way people shop and how companies advertise and sell their products.
One of the principle advantages that Google Adwords has over traditional forms of advertising is that you can specifically target your desired audience. In theory only people interested in your products will see your advert, and you can choose to either pay when people click on your ad (pay per click) or per thousand views of your ad.
When you do a search on Google, adverts will show up on the right side of the page and sometimes above the links on the left. Within the ad you have the title naming the product or service and a two-line description, below which is the web address.
The position of your advert and how close if is to the top number 1 position is determined by your budget. You state the maximum you are willing to pay for each key word that links to your ad, and are then charged each time your ad link is clicked (the keyword is the word that is typed into the Google search engine). Google operates a system similar to an auction so if you pay more than a competitor your advert will be above theirs. You are not necessarily charged for the your full bid, only enough to be above the competition. For example you may have offered to pay 70p per click, but will only be charged 1p more than the maximum price of your next competitor, so if they have offered 45p your actual price will be 46p per click. Of course the more popular a product or service, the more competition there is and the more it costs.
You set what your daily budget is and once this has been used up your advert will no longer be visible. This way while you may not know what the exact price per click will be, you will know your maximum costs.
Of course this is a very basic overview of how pay per click advertising works. Within Google Adwords you are presented with a large variety of options. For example you can vary how and when your ads are shown and specify the position; you can monitor how successful your adverts are and where people are going when they enter your site; and you can specify what part of the country your ads are show, amongst many other aspects.