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Adwords is undoubtedly the biggest pay-per-click (PPC) advertising game the world has known. The honor originally belonged to Overture (bought by Yahoo and now called Yahoo Search) but as with the search engine game, Google caught up fast and left everyone in the PPC game choking in its dust.

When the news of the success of Adwords advertisers spread like wildfire, hundreds of thousands (million perhaps, only Google knows!) of online advertisers very soon shifted to Adwords advertising. Consequently, the competition to stand out vis-'-vis other advertisers for the same or similar products (as affiliates) became cut-throat.

To succeed against your advertising competitors nowadays, you need to make your ads better. By better, I mean your ads should stand out when placed side-by-side with your competitors'. Then yours should have a higher click-through rate (CTR).

The 'old' tricks just don't work anymore. Too many advertisers are using them and now everyone is on equal footing. The following are the new techniques that you need to apply to succeed in 2007:

1. Dare to be different.

When many of you are selling the same product (as affiliates of the vendor), you tend to say the same things in your ads ' the benefits, the price, the discount, etc. In essence, your ad pitches look similar. How can you stand out? Say things differently.

How do you find out what's different? I assume that you already know the main keywords appropriate for your product. Do a Google search of your keywords and see how the ads of your competitors look like, especially the ones that are at the top. It's a safe bet that they are on top because their ad is well written and their CTR is relatively high.

Your goal is to say what they are saying but with a few twists here and there to make yours different. If most have long ads, make yours as short as possible, even if you strike out some of the benefits. Your goal is to attract their attention so that they'll click your ad'they'll read your full sales pitch after they have clicked your ad.

For a change you can criticize the product in your ad. Since you are most likely the only one doing it (all the others are heaping glowing praises) your ad will stand out and will have higher likelihood of click. Of course, the reader will know the real benefits of the product as soon as he/she reaches the website. You get the drift.

2. Position the bolded keywords differently.

In Adwords, when the keywords used by searchers are contained in your ads, the keywords are automatically bolded. Again notice that almost all of the top ads have very similarly bolded title. For example, if the ads are selling Nokia N800 cell phone, almost all the ads say only 'Nokia N800', all bolded at that. How does one be different and stand out without removing the keyword? You can include the price in the title, e.g. 'Nokia 800 at $400'. Or '$400 ' Nokia N800'. If you do this, your ad stands out from the rest.