The world of digital marketing has managed to expand enormously over the years, drawing in multiple players. After all, there is no dearth of choices when it comes to choosing PPC networks. Some of these options are established and popular, while some are new but promising.

As of 2021, the PPC industry is worth over $109 billion annually and holds the potential to reach $124 billion within this year itself. Despite a raging pandemic that managed to devastate all sectors of the economy, the digital marketing industry continued to grow unaffected.

Therefore, it makes a lot of sense for brands to look out for the best PPC networks of 2021 in terms of performance, experience and potential.

What is a PPC network?

PPC platforms provide brands with the opportunity to display targeted ads on their partner websites or even entirely within their domain. The ads could be in the form of text-based search engine results, display banner ads, video ads, pop-up advertisements, native advertising or even in-app ads. Depending on the platform, you might get to choose from all or a few of these options.

However, it might become difficult to understand which network to pick for your campaign. Interestingly, this choice depends on your target audience and your campaign much more than the platforms themselves. A little assistance from a professional player, like PPC London, can help you gauge which option fits you the most. We have tried covering some salient aspects of the top 7 players in PPC for some informed choice.

The 7 best PPC Ad networks

Google Ads

Undoubtedly, the most popular and widely-used PPC ads network on this list has to be from the digital giant. Several factors contribute towards its massive reach, with over 78% of the global market share to their credit. Google single-handedly sees 40,000 searches every second, 3.5 billion searches every day, and 1.2 trillion searches every year on a global scale.

The immense popularity of the search engine has direct repercussions on the performance of its PPC network. It allows you to target audiences more effectively. At the same time, it also brings in stiff competition because all your competitors are probably using it too. This can result in unprecedented costs for campaigns involving certain competitive keywords. Nevertheless, with the size of its global reach, a variety of bidding strategies and a high suite of tools, Google Ads continues to stay seated on the top of the list.

Microsoft Advertising – Bing Ads

If numbers are allowed to do the talking, Microsoft Advertising emerges as another big player when it comes to PPC networks. After all, a single Bing ad buy can help you reach 162 million unique searchers using Microsoft and Yahoo sites – which is quite impressive. The platform comes with a range of interesting benefits such as cheaper rates compared to Google.

Microsoft ads also provide you with the option of browsing through a list of the most popular sites to exhibit your content ads. At the same time, the customers you can expect on this network are from high earning backgrounds, which is great for your campaign. Even though the partner websites list might not be as exhaustive as Google’s, options like MSN, Yahoo! And AOL are good getters.

Facebook Ads

With an advertising audience of a whopping 2.14 billion, Facebook is one of the most effective PPC networks to look out for in 2021. Unlike Google and Microsoft’s search-based ad campaigns, Facebook focuses on demographic targeting. This means that Facebook users are directly shown relevant ads without them actively searching for them. This is based on the myriad of algorithms the platform deploys based on the user’s search history, friend lists and engagement on the platform.

Besides, Facebook ads are not limited to its timeline only; they also show in Facebook Messenger and Facebook Audience Network. You can leverage the power of Facebook’s demographic data to target specific groups of audiences and the results are quite promising.

LinkedIn Ads

Did you know that an ad on LinkedIn can reach 13% of the world’s population? Interesting, isn’t it? The professional networking site is considered to be a hub of business-oriented and well-educated users. This makes both purchasing intent and power rise higher compared to other platforms, proving to be a great PPC network choice.

LinkedIn ads can appear in user feeds as either sponsored posts, text and dynamic ads or through display partner networks and InMail ads. With this kind of variety, users are bound to come across and pay attention to your ads more than on other platforms, besides them taking it seriously if planned well.

Ignoring the cost aspect, which is significantly higher than others, there is no beating LinkedIn in terms of lead quality. If you are looking for B2B marketing, LinkedIn is the best market bet.

YouTube Ads

Like other social media platforms, YouTube is also a haven for advertisers today, seeing over 2 billion logged-in users globally every month. This makes for an excellent opportunity for advertisers to set targeted campaigns in motion, using YouTube Analytics tools from their account.

However, YouTube ads come with their own set of cons. For instance, ad viewers might not have purchasing intent considering they weren’t searching for your brand actively anyway. Yet, with the kind of variety YouTube ads provide – skippable and non-skippable stream ads, bumper ads, video discovery ads and masthead ads – the platform has tremendous potential.

Twitter Ads

Unlike most other platforms on this list, Twitter ads remain entirely contained within the Twitter network. There are no network partners and no outside players, which adds to the campaign’s credibility and effectiveness. With the help of Twitter analytics tools, one can easily set up ads using flexible formats and minimal compliance regulations.

Taboola

Taboola is quite similar to Google Adsense and the Display Network. Only, it is a dedicated native advertising platform that works with a carefully curated list of websites. You can use Taboola if you want your campaigns to appear on Business Today, New York Times and Forbes. All you need to do is whip up amazing engaging content and Taboola takes care of the rest.

The Takeaway

There are so many choices for advertisers when it comes to PPC networks that it is easy to get confused. Logically, it is a safe bet to go for established players in the market because of large audience pools and exhaustive reach. With a thorough understanding of who your target audiences are and what message you are trying to convey to them, you can pick out the best and most suited PPC network for your brand with ease.