Answer to Question 1
Keyword advertising refers to relevant text ads that appear as sponsored links along with the results of a keyword search in a search engine. Clear relevance to the user's search term is an important variable that contributes to the success of this process. Their effectiveness also depends on variables such as the position in which the sponsored ad appears. The top spot is most effective, with diminishing returns for ads appearing under that. To help advertisers improve their results, search engines allow the text ads to include variables that will be replaced by the user's actual search terms.
Answer to Question 2
The four major categories of information systems are:
1. Transaction processing systems, such as payroll or order processing, track the flow of the daily routine transactions that are necessary to conduct business.
2. Management information systems (MIS) provide the management control level with reports and access to the organization's current performance and historical records. Most MIS reports condense information from TPS and are not highly analytical.
3. Decision-support systems (DSS) support management decisions when these decisions are unique, rapidly changing, and not specified easily in advance. They have more advanced analytical models and data analysis capabilities than MIS and often draw on information from external as well as internal sources.
4. Executive support systems (ESS) support senior management by providing data of greatest importance to senior management decision makers, often in the form of graphs and charts delivered via portals. They have limited analytical capabilities but can draw on sophisticated graphics software and many sources of internal and external information.
The various types of systems in the organization exchange data with one another. TPS are a major source of data for other systems, especially MIS and DSS. ESSs primarily receive data from lower-level systems.