Google offers paid advertisements which appear in search results on google.com with the use of Google Ads or advertisements that appear on other websites through the Display Network and Google’s AdSense program.
Below is an example of a Google search engine results page (SERP). The sponsored results, or ads, are denoted with an “Ad” label. There are two sections of paid Google ads, one above the “natural” or organic results and one at the bottom of the results page.
Google Ads at the top of the SERP:
Google Ads at the bottom of the SERP:
Google also offers Display Ads, which appear on the Google Display Network. The Display Network is an extensive collection of outside, third-party websites that have partnered with Google and agreed to serve Google ads. Google ads on the Display Network can be in text, image, video, or rich media format, and can be targeted differently. This includes remarketing and banner ads.
If using AdSense, your ads would appear in the selected areas on a website:
The Google Ads auction is focused around keywords – advertisers choose a list of keywords to target that are relevant to their business offerings, the words that people are most likely to use when searching for their product. They then bid on these keywords, basing each bid on how much they are willing to pay for a Google user to click on their ad. This bid, combined with a Quality Score assigned by Google based on the quality of your proposed ad, determines which Google ads appear on the SERP. When users click the ads, the advertiser pays a certain cost (the cost per click, or CPC), which is calculated according to the below formula:
