Pay-per-Click Advertising – Part 1

What is Cost-per-Click Advertising?

Cost-per-Click (or Pay-per-Click, CPC, PPC) is a digital marketing channel that businesses use to drive traffic and conversions from search engines.

CPC can be a great way to promote your business and attract new customers but for those who are just getting started with the channel it can be difficult to set up and operate.

What is PPC?

PPC or pay per click is an online advertising model where businesses advertise on a platform like Google Ads and pay a commission every time someone clicks on a pre-created ad.

Run just about any search on Google (or Bing) and you’ll see ads at the top of the results page.

The product grid on the right or the bar at the top is shown to the user when the search is for commercial purposes.

Companies use such advertising to attract sales from the target audience. All available PPC platforms provide great targeting depth. This means that the advertiser can show ads only to those who are more suitable for it: there are geographic, demographic and other types of targeting. Pay-per-Click allows you to reach these buyers.

Paid advertising is a big business, Alphabet (Google) alone makes over $162 billion a year from its advertising platforms. And this number is growing every year.

How does PPC advertising work?

Pay per click as a marketing channel covers a number of different advertising platforms, the most common of which are Google Ads and Bing Ads. And each of these platforms has different ad formats, including: Search Ads, Shopping Ads, Display Ads, Video Ads, and Gmail Ads.

But regardless of the platform and advertising format, the principle of how PPC works remains almost the same, and this is a fairly simple process:

• Account registration,
• Creation of a campaign, ad group and ads themselves with the ability to select targeting, keywords, audience, etc.
• Setting the maximum cost per click,
• Your ad is up for auction with other advertisers bidding on the same keywords,
• The auction determines the order in which ads are shown,
• You only pay when someone clicks on your ad.