Google AdWords dominated paid search, but it was never the only game in town. Throughout the 2000s and into the 2010s, a diverse ecosystem of alternative PPC networks offered advertisers and affiliates opportunities that didn't exist on Google — often with lower CPCs, less competition, and more permissive policies. For savvy online marketers, these alternative networks were the foundation of highly profitable arbitrage businesses.
Microsoft adCenter / Bing Ads (2006)
Microsoft launched adCenter in 2006, initially powering ads on MSN Search. When Microsoft launched Bing in June 2009 and formed the Yahoo-Bing Network (later the Microsoft Audience Network), adCenter became the second-largest PPC platform in the English-speaking world. Rebranded as Bing Ads in 2012 and Microsoft Advertising in 2019, the platform consistently offered lower CPCs than Google AdWords for equivalent keywords — often 30–70% cheaper — due to lower competition among advertisers.
For affiliate marketers, Bing Ads was a valuable complement to Google AdWords. Campaigns that had been profitable on Google before Quality Score changes or policy updates could often be run profitably on Bing for longer. The audience skewed older and more affluent than Google's, making it particularly effective for financial services, insurance, and senior-oriented products.
FindWhat.com (2000–2007)
FindWhat.com was one of the early PPC networks that competed with Overture and Google AdWords. Founded in 2000, it provided paid search results to a network of partner sites and was particularly popular with smaller advertisers who found Google and Overture's minimum bids too high. FindWhat merged with Espotting (a European PPC network) in 2004 to form Miva, Inc., which continued to operate until being acquired by Digital River in 2007.
7Search (2000–2017)
7Search was a second-tier PPC network that became a favorite among affiliate marketers for its extremely low CPCs and permissive advertising policies. While Google AdWords required landing pages with substantial content and banned many affiliate offers, 7Search allowed direct linking to affiliate offers and had minimal quality requirements. CPCs on 7Search were often $0.01–$0.10 for keywords that cost $1–$10 on Google.
The trade-off was traffic quality. 7Search's traffic came from a network of smaller websites and toolbar searches, and conversion rates were typically much lower than Google's. But for affiliates running high-volume, low-margin campaigns, the economics could still work. 7Search shut down in 2017, citing the difficulty of competing with Google and Facebook's advertising platforms.
LookSmart (1996–2014)
LookSmart was an Australian-founded web directory that became a significant player in the paid search market in the early 2000s. It powered paid search results for MSN Search and other partners, competing directly with Overture. At its peak, LookSmart was processing millions of searches per day and generating significant advertising revenue. However, when MSN switched to its own search technology and later to Bing, LookSmart lost its primary distribution channel and gradually declined.
Kanoodle and Miva
Kanoodle was a contextual advertising network that competed with Google AdSense, offering publishers an alternative for monetizing their content. It was acquired by About.com (a New York Times Company property) in 2006. Miva (the merged entity of FindWhat and Espotting) operated a network of paid search and contextual advertising products until its acquisition by Digital River.
The Traffic Arbitrage Economy
The existence of multiple PPC networks at different price points created a thriving traffic arbitrage economy. The basic model: buy cheap traffic from a second-tier network (7Search, Miva, LookSmart), send it to a page monetized with Google AdSense or a high-paying affiliate offer, and pocket the difference. A marketer might pay $0.02 per click on 7Search for a keyword that generated $0.50 in AdSense revenue per click — a 25x return on ad spend.
At its peak, traffic arbitrage was generating millions of dollars per day for its practitioners. The practice was technically allowed by most ad networks (though Google eventually banned AdSense publishers from buying traffic purely for arbitrage purposes). The arbitrage opportunity narrowed significantly as second-tier networks improved their quality filters and as Google's AdSense policies became more restrictive.
The Consolidation
By 2015, the PPC landscape had consolidated dramatically. Google and Microsoft (Bing) accounted for the vast majority of paid search spending. Facebook's advertising platform, launched in 2007 and dramatically improved with the introduction of Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences in 2013, had become a major competitor for advertising budgets. The second-tier PPC networks that had powered the arbitrage economy of the 2000s had mostly shut down or been acquired. The era of easy arbitrage was over.