What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising???

Pay-Per-Click advertising, also known as Search Engine Marketing, is an expanding and exciting medium for connecting Internet consumers with your products and services is search engine advertising, also commonly referred to as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. One of the fastest growing areas of online advertising, search engines provide an easy and convenient method for online shoppers to research, locate, and purchase the products they are looking for.This presents an opportunity for advertisers of all sizes to display highly targeted advertisements when users are searching for the products they offer.Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is simply one of the most cost effective ways to advertise online, because the advertiser decides what specific keyword searches that the advertisement is displayed. Unlike other online advertising methods, PPC advertising provides instant results at affordable rates.As a PPC advertiser, one can easily build, customize, and manage their search campaigns, as well as closely monitor its performance. Typically, PPC advertisers measure their performance based on a combination metrics, such as conversion rate, Return-On-Ad-Spend (ROAS), Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA), Cost-Per-Lead (CPL), or Click-Through-Rate (CTR). Another benefit of PPC is that it continues to evolve, and advertisers can evolve with it, testing new branding and messaging efforts in real time.Understanding and using Pay-Per-Click advertising is an important step to promoting a product or service, and is something that every online marketer should be considering.There are three main elements to a successful PPC ad program: Constant monitoring, analysis, and fine-tuning.Pay per click search engines offer a way to buy your way to the top of search results for any term you wish. With proper management, and a clear focus, pay per click search engines can offer some of the most well targeted and economical advertising on the Internet.Pay per click advertising works through a bidding process, and the ads appear prominently on the results pages of search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The highest bidder for a particular word or phrase receives top placement, and depending on the search engine.Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website. Advertisers bid on keywords they predict their target market will use as search terms when they are looking for a product or service. When a user types a keyword query matching the advertiser's keyword list, or views a page with relevant content, the advertiser's ad may be shown. These ads are called a "Sponsored link" or "sponsored ads" and appear next to or above the "natural" or organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a webmaster/blogger chooses on a content page.Pay per click ads may also appear on content network websites. In this case, ad networks such as Google AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network attempt to provide ads that are relevant to the content of the page where they appear, and no search function is involved.While many companies exist in this space, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the largest network operators as of 2007. Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0.01 (up to US$0.50), these prices are often referred to as Costs Per Click (CPC). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Arguably this advertising model may be open to abuse through click fraud, although Google and other search engines have implemented automated systems to guard against this.

[1]CategoriesPPC engines can be categorized into two major categories "Keyword" or sponsored match and "Content Match". Sponsored match displays your listing on the search engine itself whereas content match features ads on publisher sites and in newsletters and emails.

[2]There are other types of PPC engines that deal with Products and/or services. Search engine companies may fall into more than one category. More models are continually evolving. Pay per click programs do not generate any revenue solely from traffic for sites that display the ads. Revenue is generated only when a user clicks on the ad itself.