Let me preface this with, I am a fan of Google Adwords, and have spent a great deal of money with Google, and continue to. It can be effective, but I emphasize on CAN.
Businesses have to use some form of online marketing to be seen. Its just the world we live in. One of the most powerful web marketing platforms is obviously google adwords. Marketing with Google Adwords work well, especially for companies with bigger budgets, that dont have the time or resources to work on SEO ~ Which can be allot better of an investment in my opinion. Furthermore, many search engines use google as their engine.
That being said, Google adwords is something that really needs allot of attention, especially if you are planning on spending allot of money with it. Google is great, you can set up an account, and they will even walk you through setting it up, and you can even see the results relatively quickly. Not that hard if you pay attention, but there are a few things in adwords, you really need to pay attention to, or your money spent will simply be a waste.
Recently, I noticed something in my account that was off. We were getting a bunch of traffic from 3rd world countries even though the target market is US and Canada. One thing people should look at in their Google AdWords is the target country settings. After you select the target country, there is a another setting (easy to overlook) for those who have interest in your target location. By default this is selected. Basically if a user is in Syria, and has “an interest” in the US, and the US is your target market, they will see your adds too! Was loosing more than 50% of my clicks and remarking to random 3rd world countries on a monthly basis.