Pros & Cons Of Online Advertising: Paid And Free

A few days ago, a small group of associates and I were comparing paid and free online advertising. It was a good discussion, but ultimately, it seemed like for every pro, regardless of paid of free advertising, there was a con and vice versa. At the end of the day, however, I wouldn't dismiss either option, because they are both very beneficial. I know there is no right or wrong answer, but I am curious to know what others think, as well. What do you consider to be pros and cons of both, paid and free online advertising? Would you ever deem one to be more valuable than the other? If so, which one and why?

 

The thing is, it depends on the experience that someone will have with each. For example, if someone is good at paid advertising, then they will likely know how to make a profit, while if someone is new, they are likely to fail and lose money. The same thing goes for free advertising, some people will be experienced and know how to use it effectively, while others, who don't, may waste a lot of time.

 

I think paid advertising is a bit more effective. When it comes to advertising you need something that gets consumer attention quickly and with free advertising places, the usual audience you get are people who are seeking out free advertising as well, so in short you are getting views from sellers instead of customers.

 

I don't really think of Organic listings as "free" advertising to be honest. In fact, you can dump more money into SEO efforts and get little to no return on that when compared to Pay Per Click ads, which produce faster results, and are easier to manage to a specific cost per conversion. You have far greater control over paid ads than you do with your organic traffic. You cannot "turn off" your organic serps when your company is closed in the evenings, or boost your rankings by bidding more during peak times for your sales. You can't directly control the copy in your SERP listings like you can with paid search ads, and you can't A/B test landing pages that those SERP listings point to as easily as you can with platforms like AdWords.

 

I have done the free advertising and it was useless. I see that to get anything accomplished I would have to pay. Paying for advertising is the better way to go. The service is much better and It will get you the traffic that you need.

 

Paid advertising such as adwords is getting expensive and as publishers you tend to end up with plenty of clicks but not sales.

 

I never used Adwords so I can never go for Google's paid advertising service. I think there are plenty of free advertising sites that can be used but I am not sure which are reliable.

 

Paid advertising such as PPC campaigns are good if you can invest money for quick success or you can work organically for getting SEO rankings but it will take sometime to get good rankings on your desired keywords.

 

You forgot the backlinks advertising in paid advertising except Pay-Per-Click. Contextual links building maybe go vs PPC.