Google’s Adwords is the go-to platform for running Pay-Per-Click and display campaigns. It allows businesses to promote themselves across all devices and target specific audiences in the process. Google’s Adwords is effective but expensive, intact it does not deliver positive ROI for many businesses. Therefore it is worth exploring Google Adwords alternatives.

There are several alternatives to Google Adwords that are cheaper and could offer a better ROI. 

Why use AdWords Alternatives?

Here are some of reasons why you should consider alternatives to Google Adwords:

• New Brand – If you’re just starting, Google Adwords may not be able to generate enough traffic to your site as it can be difficult to find traction with your keywords in Adwords, due to the market saturation.
• Getting traffic but not converting – Too much traffic may not seem like a problem, but it can have an adverse effect. This is because Google shows the ads on the website which engaged with their AdSense program and if the site where the ads are showing are not of high value than there are chances that you will not get a good conversion.
• It’s too expensive – Adwords is a competitive platform. If you’re on a low budget, then it might not be the best choice.
• Your niche is not compatible with Adwords – Your target audiences might be spending more time on other platforms like LinkedIn or Instagram
• AdWords doesn’t suit your needs – there is a chance that some of your campaigns won’t turn well in AdWords whereas you can do best with other advertising partners depending on your niche.

Best Alternatives to Google AdWords

Facebook Ads

If you are targeting a younger audience, then Facebook is a great alternative. Its advertising network has grown over the years with new features which can help you reach your target audience that can be filtered by age, geographical locations, education status, marital status, interests, hobbies, etc.

Facebook knows its users better than Google. Besides, targeting certain “keywords”, you can also target certain “people and personas”, which you can’t with Google.

Pros

• Inexpensive than Adwords – Facebook ads have the lowest cost per 1,000 impressions amongst the major online advertising platforms
• Micro-targeting
• Facebook has 1.2 billion users
• Call to action option (Buy Now/Sign Up) will convert well
• You can Choose between CPC and CPM pay structures
• More flexible than AdWords
• You can increase your brand loyalty through a Facebook fan page

Cons

• You will have to pay to be seen
•  Lack of organic views

Microsoft Advertising

Like Google’s advertising platform is AdWords, similarly, Microsoft’s advertising platform was Bing Ads, which is now named Microsoft advertising. The main advantage of Microsoft advertising is that it has a much lesser bid price compared to AdWords and gives excellent conversion.

Microsoft advertising is not as popular as Adwords. However, it is famous in the US and has more than 34% of the market share in the search engine. If you are targeting the US market, Microsoft advertising can work perfectly for you.

Pros

• Work great if you are targeting US traffic
• Less expensive than AdWords
• Microsoft advertising ad description length is of 71 characters, while AdWords only allows 35 characters.
• You can set both daily and monthly budget (In AdWords only daily)
•  Enable you to reach around 600 million users worldwide.

Cons

• Can’t work great in all locations due to less share of the search engine market
•  Lower click-through rate
• No option for a negative keyword while making an ad campaign

BuySellAds

If you’re looking for a  platform to purchase banner ads across the web, then BuySellAds is an excellent choice. With a turnabout of more than 6 billion ad impressions per month, BuySellAds is currently the largest marketplace to buy and sell banner ads on different blogs and websites.

Pros

• You can select the site as per your choice
• can choose either on a time basis or impression basis
• can target very specific niche audiences by manually creating advertisements
•  Cheaper than per click model

Cons

• You don’t get any assurance that you will get referral traffic as this works on impression/time basis.
• If ads are not appealing, this is not going to give you a good ROI.

Infolinks is one of the best inline text ads network. Infolinks primary focus is using user intent and real-time engagement to customize ad placement and provide customers with beneficial content.

Getting into Infolinks is quite easy for both Advertiser and publishers. But text ads sometimes frustrate the users and so many publishers don’t use Infolinks, and so there is a significant probability that you won’t get quality traffic.

Pros

• Very easy interface
• A much less expensive network
• As it doesn’t occupy space, so webmasters use this for a text ad network

Cons

• As these ads may irritate the users, so many web owner doesn’t use and so you will not get enough traffic
•  Bad conversion rate

AdRoll

Ad Roll is popular as a third-party tool that has been officially approved by Facebook to provide access to FBX. This is a retargeting platform that also supports Google Adwords and also has their advertising medium.

Ad Roll might be the best retargeting platform, however,  its prices are relatively high and so can’t suit best for new or smaller advertisers.

Pros

• AdRoll  can help you customize your campaign for the best result
• Have various Ad options – Facebook/Google etc.
• Due to retargeting, the previous visitors will visit again, and there is a chance of more conversion.
•  You can personalize your retargeting ads.
• Customers who are retargeted are three times more likely to click on your ad than people who haven’t interacted with your business before.

Cons

• Comparatively expensive
• Seeing your business ads all the time can make people creepy

Reddit Ads

Reddit is a very big online community which generates more than 37 billion page views per year. However, once Redditors sense your unauthentic marketing intent, you’re dead.

But fortunately, Reddit has tons of very targeted ad inventory and it offers advertisers with self serve styled adverts that can be managed by distinct budgets and reach millions of internet users based on the target audience parameters that have been set by the advertisers.

Pros

• Increased Traffic
• Niche Marketing
• Plenty of data

Cons

• Not great for beginners
• Your efforts can backfire
• Not Everything flies

Yahoo Gemini

Yahoo Gemini is one of the most useful and cost-effective Google Adwords alternatives which can be small scale business models can use to get necessary market recognition in a reasonable budget.

Biggest advantages that advertisers can have when they choose  Yahoo Gemini instead of  Adwords is the excellent service – real people, absence of automated replies and a personal touch in solving all your problems.

Pros

• Gemini is less competitive than other SEM vendors
• If you’re getting little to no traffic on Gemini, there’s an easy fix; you can opt into their partner network by making sure this box is checked.
• Their team is very responsive and helps you pull reports and look into performance issues.

Cons

• Traffic quality
• There is no bulk editor
•  Reporting is buggy

Amazon Ads

Not only does Amazon offer a platform for new businesses to sell their products, but they also challenge Google in the field of advertising. After all, with 300 million users, Amazon knows best what its users buy, and when and how they do it.

Once Amazon hosts your products, you can pay for sponsored ads that will recommend your company to others shopping for similar things.  This is extremely effective because if a user is browsing about a product similar to yours, your ads are likely to catch his or her attention.

Pros

• High Click Volume
• Cheaper cost per clicks
• Multiple Destination URL Options
• Custom Ad Text and Image

Cons

• They’ll only display banner ads if you win the Buy Box
• Higher CPCs

Twitter Ads

Twitter has the second-largest audience on social networks, with 317 million active monthly users. Even a small amount of money can bring you substantial traffic and revenue with Twitter Ads.

Setting up ads on Twitter is easy. However, before running your campaign, define what’s the average value of your follower, lead or customer and take into account your customer lifetime value.  Always remember that the cost per lead should be lower than your revenue. Otherwise, you may end up losing money on ads.

Pros

• Narrow Segmentation
• Multiple Types of Ads
• Cheap

Cons

• Lagging in Analytics
• Easy to Be Missed
• Hard to Prove ROI

Quantcast

Quantcast offers excellent tools to measure traffic, frequency, demographics, and geography. It captures the data about pages a certain browser was on, what words were typed into the search, and the amount of time a certain browser was on the website.

It also offers some excellent reports about shopping interests, media interests, business and occupation of your customers which can help you connect with your most relevant audience across the entire internet.

Pros

• Complete audience demographic analysis
• Analyzing return visits
• Ease of use with a lot of deep data behind the tool

Cons

• The interface is not “user-friendly”
• Data is only available in 30-day increments
• Ineffective developer APIs

Unleash your marketing potential and start advertising! If you have any questions? Feel free to drop them in the comments below.