The smallest differences in your PPC ads can have a great effect on the performance and overall success of your paid search campaign. The objective of creating an effective ad is to catch the users attention and provide them enough of an incentive to continue through to your site with an innate sense of want or curiosity for your information or product. Effectively portraying your site to the user in 3 lines or less is as much a science as an art, and is essential when attempting to maximize click-through rates. This, in fact, is the only goal of your PPC ads. Get the user to your site. The conversion must be taken care of by properly structuring landing pages, site composition, and a slew of other factors.

There are three primary portions of a PPC ad, which can vary slightly depending on the advertising medium you choose to utilize.

• The Ad Title: The title is the first thing users look at when assessing whether or not to click on your ad. It must catch the user’s attention enough for them to either continue reading the remainder of your ad, or click to visit your site. Your goal should be to include keywords that have been typed into the search engine by the user. The more keywords your title includes that directly relate to the search, the higher clickthrough rate you will inherently receive.
• Ad Description: Most users will not immediately click on an ad after reading just the title, so if you were able to at least grab their attention with the title you must be able to properly relay your message within the description.  This is where the more specific description of your site should go, your benefits, if you are FREE, or some other distinction that really sets you apart. At the same time if you happen to run a very specific site that doesn’t cover the subject matter searched in its entirety, this is where you will want to display to the user what you really are about or what you do. If the keyword you were displayed for is “Travel” but you only specialize in Traveling by camelback, this is the place you will need to describe that. While your goal is to attract as many users as possible you want to keep conversions in mind at all times. Do your best to describe that to the users here. It is just as important to discourage the wrong types of users as it is to encourage the right ones.
• Ad URL: This is the URL that is shown directly to the users within the ad, but not necessarily the landing page that your ad will direct the user to. This is really just to show the user what domain you will be directing them to in the event of a click.

There are different programs available that allow web marketers to optimize their campaigns without having to go back on a daily basis to check performance and conversions. Google AdWords has a program that will allow you to create multiple ads for the same marketing campaign. Depending on the click through rates, google will automatically display that ad with the highest percentage.  This may be enough for some marketers, but you can also take closer looks into testing various ads yourself to make sure the conversions are in line with expectations from each ad. Once again, it’s all about conversions!