Pay per click what is it

If you know your customer and how they search, you can use these insights to reduce wasted advertising spend. Run an ecommerce store? You can use shopping ads to display your products right on the SERPs in prime position. Want to convert basket abandoners into conversions?

Use display remarketing to server an offer to encourage the desired action. PPC encompasses a whole range of different ad formats, and these can be used to drive success for specific businesses and use scenarios. Often, businesses consider both SEO and PPC as two similar channels to help them drive traffic from the search engines. And while there is no denying that they both involve appearing on, and getting clicks from, search engines, they are two very different channels.

But really, the two aren't competing channels. They are both parts of a much wider digital marketing mix, and the two can, and should, work together effectively to drive success online. Whenever possible, try to avoid comparing these two channels and see both as vital parts of driving digital growth. It is by far the most popular PPC platform and offers a wealth of opportunities for pretty much any business to drive success from the channel.

From a management perspective, the two platforms are very similar; the main difference is the market size and potential reach. It is estimated that, as of June , Google's market share in the US is That said, Bing Ads can still drive traffic and conversions, and the ROI is often cited as being better than Google Ads, albeit at a lower volume.

Google Ads and Bing Ads aren't the only ad networks that you might consider to drive growth with PPC; others include:. For the most part, we will mainly be covering Google Ads and Bing Ads. If you are looking to expand on these popular platforms, the options listed above are worth looking into social ads are often seen within their own channel, separate to search engine PPC.

If you are looking to learn more about choosing the right PPC channel , check out the video below from our Weekly Wisdom with Joel Bondorowsky. For most businesses, search, and shopping campaigns are the primary ad formats that they will use. Let's take a look at the basics of search ad campaigns, helping you understand what the different components mean when using this type of PPC ad for the first time.

The main structure of search ads sees an account split up into 'campaigns' and 'ad groups. You need to have a good grasp on both of these concepts, as they form the foundations of your account; it is really simple and straightforward. Unless you are setting up a large account, you will usually only have a small number of campaigns in your account. A campaign contains multiple ad groups which, in turn, contain ads and keywords. As an example, let's say you are a car dealership.

You might set up different campaigns for 'used cars' and 'new cars' so that you can keep budgets, targeting, and other adjustments separate. You set a bid, or price, to be used when an ad group's keywords trigger an ad to appear. The number of ad groups that you will have within a campaign really depends upon your business and the number of keyword groups that you will be bidding on. You can include multiple keywords and match types within an ad group.

Some PPC specialists like to use a structure known as SKAGs single keyword ad groups that includes just one keyword per ad group, to allow for maximum control over targeting and bidding. When a user runs a search for a query, the keywords used in an ad account are matched against the query to show ads. There are different match types that can be used for keywords, and these control whether variations of a keyword trigger an ad to show, or not.

Match types allow you to control which search terms will trigger your ads and how wide the variants are. Source: Google. Quite simply, negative keywords allow you to prevent an ad from showing for searches that include that term. This provides a great level of control when combined with insights from the search terms report, meaning that you can stop your ads from showing for terms that may be similar, but aren't relevant, or wouldn't convert.

Using negative keywords is an effective way to prevent wasted budget and traffic that isn't deemed to be relevant. Ads are what show on the search engine results when you successfully win a bid auction and are what encourages a user to click. You can have multiple ads within an ad group and choose how they are rotated. You need to be sure to write engaging ads that clearly communicate your message and USP.

Writing engaging ad copy takes skill and consideration on your sales messaging, and we highly recommend that you take a look at this Weekly Wisdom with Joel Bondorowsky on the strategy behind effective PPC ad and sales copy.

Every time our ad is clicked, sending a visitor to our website, we have to pay the search engine a small fee. When PPC is working correctly, the fee is trivial, because the visit is worth more than what you pay for it. A lot goes into building a winning PPC campaign: from researching and selecting the right keywords, to organizing those keywords into well-organized campaigns and ad groups, to setting up PPC landing pages that are optimized for conversions. Search engines reward advertisers who can create relevant, intelligently targeted pay-per-click campaigns by charging them less for ad clicks.

If your ads and landing pages are useful and satisfying to users, Google charges you less per click, leading to higher profits for your business. Google Ads is the single most popular PPC advertising system in the world. Google Ads operates on a pay-per-click model, in which users bid on keywords and pay for each click on their advertisements. Every time a search is initiated, Google digs into the pool of Ads advertisers and chooses a set of winners to appear in the valuable ad space on its search results page.

How are your Google Ads really performing? However, frequency doesn't mean you should bombard your potential customers with ads because excessive targeting can end up generating rejection. The PPC is a payment model, not specific to a certain site or location. That's why you have many options when deciding where you want to show your ads.

The main ones are the following:. Search engine advertising, also known as search engine marketing SEM , allows you to show ads to users based on the keywords entered the search bar for example, "car sharing in London".

For advertisers, search advertising offers two great advantages :. The main advertising tools on social networks, such as Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads , offer pay per click options. These types of ads are integrated into the user's social network experience, either in their news section or in a side column.

One of their main advantages is that they allow you to take advantage of the information that the social networks have about their users so that you can launch highly segmented PPC ads for example, "married men who have recently moved to X".

Finally, PPC is also used when displaying banner ads on websites related to a brand's products and services or the interests of its target audience. These types of campaigns can be very effective if they are implemented well, but you have to be careful to avoid falling into intrusive advertising. It is also worth keeping in mind that CTRs are usually much lower than in other types of ads, so a larger audience is required. Responsable de la estrategia de inbound marketing en Cyberclick.

Experience in digital marketing, digital communication, media journalism, CRM management with Hubspot, creation of global content strategy, workflows and lead nurturing. About Join us Funnel Advertising What is it? Home Blog. By Laia Cardona , on 27 July PPC or pay-per-click is a common advertising model in online campaigns that helps drive traffic to a website. Here, the advertiser pays a fixed amount for every thousand impressions, meaning every time the advertisement is shown a thousand times to the users.

Keep in mind that with this model you do not know how much you will pay for each visit, due to difficulties in predicting how many clicks each additional thousand impressions will generate.

PPA payment for acquisition. In this case, the advertiser pays each time a user performs a certain action, like downloading an app. Therefore, the link between cost and objectives is even more evident than in the case of PPC. Segmentation With online advertising , you have a great deal of control over the audience you are targeting with your ads. Landing Page The landing page is the webpage that the user is directed to after clicking on your ad.

Conversion Conversion is probably the most important metric in a PPC campaign because it involves m easuring the performance of your ad in economic terms. Advantages of PPC You only pay for the visits you receive. In other advertising models, advertisers pay a fee for having the ad shown, but do not have the guarantee that it is generating results. With pay per click, there is a direct link between cost and performance visits.

You have a lot of information about the performance of the ad. The pay per click platforms offer the advertiser complete information about what is happening with the advertisement, including the number of impressions, clicks, and conversions.