Prefer using display advertising or search advertising (PPC)? Why?
I think it depends on your objective for the advertising. For example, if your campaign is targeted at a direct sale, you might prefer the Search network because you can catch people when they're in the buying mood. Conversely, if your campaign is about brand building, Display ads are great, for a few reasons:
They don't require users to be searching for you in order to see you.
They promote your brand (for free) when someone sees them and doesn't click.
They offer (via AdWords) the option to appear to someone based on keywords and interests, but also based on previous site visits. (remarketing)
I find that when planning campaigns, it's helpful for me to think in terms of having a conversation with the market:
Hi, nice to meet you. (This is a display ad based on interests.)
Thanks for coffee! We should get together again. (This is a display ad based on remarketing.)
Hey, fancy running into you here! I have a great idea for something we could do right now. (Search network)
I think when you wrap a particular concept around your entire campaign, meaning you shouldn't just choose one of these options without considering the rest, you start to see PPC advertising options for being more a thread of channels that complement one another rather than an either/or situation. Search network ads are easiest to get going. But they can absolutely become the most expensive on a PPC basis. Bottomline for all of it: Don't focus on the clicks. The "success" is measured backward by counting clicks vs. conversions. And this is one of the most wonderful reasons to consider Remarketing, which I see as a cheap do-over: When someone clicks on a Search or Display ad, they get entered into your Remarketing pool. This means you get additional oppotunities to show them ads. These clicks tend to be much cheaper, so I look at them as PPC insurance. To add to this, I hate to sound too obvious and expected, but Google has delivered the best results for my company. We've also tried Twitter and LinkedIn but neither generated any results that even approached Google in terms of ROI. (This really saddened me because I wanted LinkedIn to win because its targeting is so wonderful.)