First Time Using Paid Advertisements, Advice for a newbie?

I'm partial to Adwords and Bing PPC for a number of reasons. Mainly because it is 1: Highly accountable (you can track what's working and what isn't, usually down to the ad and keyword level, and adjust and improve accordingly) and 2: More consistent (unlike SEO, which can mean feast or famine, since you're largely at the mercy of the algorithms).

However, you did not mention your product/service or market, and certain ones are not allowed or are closely restricted, by both of those pay per click platforms. It'd be a good idea to check their terms of service before starting.

~ Marty Foley

Ongoing split testing of all elements of your ads is extremely important to the success of any ad campaign. It's case of test, tune, test, tune, test, tune.....

There are a lot of books on PPC - especially Google. Perry Marshall and Howie Jacobson have the best /most popular. Either of them will stand you in good stead. Read, implement, digest the results. They will save your butt.

A few tips: start small and grow the campaign. Check the prices and metrics daily until you are really happy with it.

Basics:
1) use exact match (not broad match)
2) define your areas geographically (usually max 20 million) - things vary VASTLY between areas. It is worth doing as one region might just be your star audience (who you can then have a special SEO campaign for - and make real money from).
3) use campaign negatives - terms that define your product by what is not. Put in your keyword into Google and see what comes up. Don't like the result? Add it as a negative!
4) Keep the campaign to search only. Once it's cooking you can spread out.

Hard work for sure. The results you get, the metrics are worth their weight in gold.

Remember that a landing page is seen by a bot. If you are good at SEO, tailoring a landing page to the bots and humans should be dead simple for you!

Have heaps of fun! I think you will enjoy it a lot more than SEO because it gets you results in an instant. You get to see the consequences of a change literally in minutes. All of which will tell you things it takes months to get out of SEO. You'll have a breeze.

Moriarty

Your questions depends heavily on your market and what you're trying to accomplish. Without talking to you about your vertical, competitors, and your goals, this is a tough question to answer.

For example: I have a client that will be releasing an e-book in the coming days. He has specific goals to grow his Facebook "likes" and capture emails from his landing pages to later market to his readers. My strategy in helping him is widely built on his goals so we're using Facebook Ads to drive likes and encourage engagement. (i.e. using a tab on his Facebook Page as a landing page with ShortStack)

Definitely focus on targeting and testing, whatever platform you choose.

Knowing your audience is quite the asset. So is only running your most successful ads!