1. Pay-Per-Click
2. Pay-Per-Impression
3. Pay-Per-Duration
4. Pay-Per-Action

Everyone who has advertised online should be familiar with pay-per-click. It’s pretty simple and works well if you are in a moderate to noncompetitive market. If you are trying to sell weight loss products however, you may end up paying as much as 2 or 3 dollars per click.

Pay-per-impression is also very common and can be much less expensive than the first option. Impression based campaigns seem to be favored by companies who sell mostly offline or who care more about branding than site traffic. For example: it makes more sense for Ford Motor Company to run an impression ad campaign because no one is really going to buy one of their cars directly online, but web exposure could dramatically increase brand awareness.

The third option is the equivalent to renting a spot on a web page for a certain amount of time. When you pay for a certain duration you could be trying to get more clicks or more impressions for the money, or you could just be trying to grab visitors from a certain site whom you’ve found to convert at a high rate.

Pay-per-action is synonymous with affiliate marketing. Basically you tell a site owner or “affiliate” that you will pay them a certain amount or percentage for every visitor they refer who completes a certain action. That action could be making a purchase, completing a survey, or filling out a lead form.

When putting together your campaign you may find that your needs are not exactly cut and dry. Successful online advertising usually combines several methods and plays with different ratios until finding that sweet spot.