What is PPC?

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model. It is used on search engines, blogs and other websites.

Advertisers pay to have advertisements clicked, and search engines, blogs and other website that host the ads, receive payments from the advertisers.

The search engines act as a middleman, and pass on payments from advertisers to blog publishers (for example) and keep a percentage of the advertising revenue themselves.

Of course for the advertisements that are seen directly on the search engines themselves, those payments are retained in full by the search engine companies. (It’s how Google and other search engine businesses makes money).

Advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market and as a result of the bidding, and other factors, the amount that advertisers pay can vary.

Search engines and publishers of websites and blogs that display PPC ads as a source of income, will show “sponsored links” or “sponsored ads,” that appear as a result of keyword matches between what the searches are looking for and where the ad is displayed.

For example, advertisements for “digital cameras” would be seen when people are searching for “digital cameras.” Furthermore, websites and blogs that have pages of information about “digital cameras,” could also present the same PPC ads.

Although many PPC providers exist, Google AdWords is by far the largest. Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter are number two and three.

A downside to the PPC advertising model is that it is open to abuse through click fraud, which can include advertisers attempting to drive their competition away by using automated robots to click on their competitor’s ads, thereby driving the costs of that competitor’s advertising campaign much higher. However, Google and other search engines have implemented automated systems to guard against abusive clicks by competitors or corrupt web developers.

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