Simple explanation of Pay Per Click

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is an advertising model used on websites where advertisers pay their host only if their ad is clicked on. One of the biggest search companies that provides Pay-Per-Click advertising is Google. Other important digital advertising platforms that offer PPC programs are Microsoft, Yahoo!, Ask Networks, AOL or Baidu in China. These companies don’t put ad banners on some specific websites; instead they return an ad as a search result that is specific to the item for which people search.   



Paid Ads are marked with green pen

     For example, if I would like to rent out my Lake Michigan cabin for vacations, I could use Google or Bing to advertise my property. The ad will show up when people are searching for "vacation cabin".  Along with “vacation cabin”, I can provide Google with a list of more specific keywords such as “waterfront cabin rentals”, “Michigan cabins”, “cabins near Chicago”, etc. for which I would like my ad to pop up. In addition to providing a list of keywords, I can also rate their efficiency. In this case, it would be more beneficial to rate "waterfront Michigan cabin" higher and "Michigan cabin" keywords lower.
     One of the PPC challenges is that we do not know all the possible queries that prospective customers may use to search for vacation rentals. To help with this problem, the search engine companies use IR (Information Retrieval) techniques to assist users with optimizing their search requests.

     The extra web traffic to our landing page can be very positive and valuable to our efforts, but it can also be problematic. Many people may consider my waterfront property too expensive, too small or too basic, and their click on my ad can cost me money. One of the solutions is to provide to the search company a list of keywords for which I do not want my paid ad to appear.

     As important as it is to provide the right keywords, it is also important to create interesting ads which will attract the right customers and repel the wrong ones.
 "What is PPC? An Introduction to Pay-Per-Click Marketing" video: