To add PPC, which stands for pay-per-click, is an online advertising model where advertisers run ads on a platform such as Google Ads and pay a fee every time someone clicks on it.

Run almost any search on Google (or Bing), and you will see ads displayed at the top of the results page. a new question go to app settings and press “Manage Questions” button.

See the product grid to the right-hand side? They are also ads that show when a search has a commercial intent.

Businesses use PPC to drive traffic, sales, or inquiries from their target audience. Common PPC platforms allow an outstanding depth of targeting, meaning that you can serve ads in front of those only who you deem to fit your customer demographic.

Search engines are the number one way that people look for suppliers of both products and services, and when there is an active audience looking for what your business offers, there is an opportunity to make a sale.

PPC can help you get in front of these people with a precise level of targeting that traditional advertising doesn’t allow for.

Want to target someone who lives in San Francisco who is looking to buy a used Ford Mustang? Easily done.

PPC offers you an opportunity to reach your audience at a time when they are looking for a business like yours while gaining data insights to help you improve the efficiency of the channel over time.

Paid advertising is big business, and it is reported that Alphabet (Google) alone earns more than $162 billion per year through their ad platforms.

PPC as a marketing channel covers a number of different ad platforms, with the most common of these being Google Ads and Bing Ads.

And within each of these platforms are different ad formats, including:
Search Ads
Shopping Ads
Display Ads
Video Ads
Gmail Ads

Most commonly, you will find that businesses start their PPC marketing on Google Ads, for the simple reason that it gives access to the largest audience of potential clients and customers, as well as a number of different ways to set up and run campaigns depending on your goals.

But regardless of the platform and ad format, the way that PPC works remains largely unchanged, and it is a pretty simple process:

1) Sign up to an advertising account with the platform.
2) Create ads (and select the right targeting by adding keywords or audiences, etc.).
3) Set the maximum cost you are willing to pay for each click.
4) Your ad goes into an auction with other advertisers who are bidding on the same keywords.
5) The auction determines the order in which the ads are shown.

6) You pay when someone clicks your ad.

It is fairly straightforward and easy to get to grips with, and while there are differences between different ad formats (and other bidding strategies that can be used, as an example), the main principles remain.

But let’s take a look at how the auction works, as this is often the part that’s the most confusing to those getting started with PPC.

When a user performs a search, an ad auction takes place that is used to determine factors including:

-An ad account’s eligibility to enter the auction.
-The order in which eligible ads will appear in the ad space on the results pages.
-How much a click will cost each of the advertisers whose ads are showing.

The first influencer on the auction here is the maximum CPC (cost-per-click) that an advertiser sets in their ad account either for a specific keyword or ad group — this is the most that they are willing to pay for each click.

But it doesn’t necessarily mean that this is how much they will actually pay, just the maximum.

The other influencer is the Quality Score (QS), a metric that consists of a number of different factors such as the expected CTR (click-through rate) of an ad, the relevancy of an ad to the query being searched for, and the experience of the landing page that the ad will send traffic to.

We will dive deeper into Quality Score shortly.

The position of an ad on the results page is determined by the Ad Rank, which can be defined in simple terms as:

Ad Rank = Quality Score x Max CPC

Google’s actual formula is a little more complex, but to gain a general understanding, this is a brilliant way to look at it.

We usually design all sites in Word Press but have the ability to create in almost any development environment such as WIX, Weebly, Html, WUFU, Shopify and more!Ad Rank plays a big part in this but isn’t the only contributing factor to CPC. We can understand the cost that an advertiser pays to appear in their position as:

Cost Per Click = Ad Rank of the advertiser below / Quality Score + $0.01

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.

PPC involves paying per click. SEO (organic search) clicks are free. You can start to drive traffic with PPC from the search engines very quickly, whereas it can take time to rank organically.

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.