Search Engine Advertising (SEA)
Search engine advertising (SEA) means paid ads in search results, such as Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, usually billed per click.
What is search engine advertising (SEA)?
Search engine advertising (SEA) covers paid advertisements that appear in search engine results, usually marked as “Sponsored”. The largest platforms are Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising (for Bing, Yahoo and partner sites). Advertisers bid on keywords and are typically billed per click, which is why SEA is often called pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
When someone searches, an auction decides which ads are shown and in what order. The outcome depends not only on the bid but also on ad quality and expected impact – reflected in metrics such as the Quality Score. A highly relevant ad can therefore win a better position at a lower cost per click.
SEA and SEO complement each other: SEA delivers visibility immediately and is easy to control and measure, while SEO builds traffic that doesn’t cost you per click but takes longer to grow. Together they are often called search engine marketing (SEM).
For international campaigns, set up campaigns per country and language, localize ad copy and landing pages rather than translating them, adjust budgets and bids to each market’s competition, and use the leading platform in each market – for example Baidu in China, Naver in South Korea or Yandex in Russia.