Pay per click programs are paid Internet advertising models offered by the top most search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. There corresponding PPC service interfaces are Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft Ad Center. Pay Per Click programs are the medium through which search engines make their money. As search engine results are provided for free and the marketing doesn’t cost at all PPC services become the only way through which marketing firms can regulate their incomes.
Also as organic results or listings that online retailers and eCommerce stores compete to rank on may be for free but the results can’t be controlled as different search engines have different parameters and algorithms which control the rankings of the articles. Therefore, PPC becomes the only advertisement arena the results of which the online websites can control. As PPC or Pay Per Click programs provide sponsored listings. The advertisers or the companies wanting their online listing on the top can bid higher and have their name/ website appear on the top.
Pay Per Click Programs involve the following:
An account on the PPC provider which may be Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing or the Microsoft Adcenter. This is a paid account where in an initial fees is involved. After the account is set up. Generally, management of the Pay Per Click programs is outsourced to companies who are expert in it. Therefore, the firm or the players in Internet marketing having great knowledge of the PPC programs look for keywords, divide these into relevant ad groups and create appropriate ads using those keywords and have corresponding landing pages created by the web designers. And eventually run the campaign using these.
The ad campaign will be running the ads using the keywords on which the bids are set. As and when the ads are clicked the advertiser will be paying the search engine from the pre-paid account. Higher the bids on the keywords more will be the chances of the ad appearing higher in the listings.
After the ads start running, there is a very crucial thing which the PPC managers control:
Cost Per Click – This is the cost which the advertiser will have to pay to the search engine for the displaying their ads on appropriate web pages. It is determined by flat-rate PPC and bid-based PPC. These are the potential value which the advertiser will have to estimate and set accordingly. So that his monthly budget is not exhausted and he gets sufficient exposure throughout the day and at the target locations. The relevance of the clicks is usually what determines the cost per click. If the clicks are by users which do not convert and leave the website, then it’s the advertiser’s loss but if the user sticks and pays up then the advertiser can seriously make profits or get a great number of leads.
What determines the relevance of the clicks?
It’s the ad copies which control the influx of useful users as opposed to those who only click the ads for the sake of it or just for browsing. An ad copy to allure the targeted audience can be controlled to appear for search queries from specific geo-locations and even at a particular time of the day.
Pay Per Click programs are the only way advertisers online can control the exposure to their website or online presence. Hence even though it’s paid, it is still highly popular.










