Pay per click, or PPC, is an advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines.
With search engines, pay per click advertisements are usually text ads placed near search results; when a site visitor clicks on the advertisement, the advertiser is charged a small amount. Variants include pay for placement and pay for ranking. Pay per click is also sometimes known as Cost Per Click (CPC).
While many companies exist in this space, Google and Yahoo! Search Marketing are the largest network operators as of 2006. Other popular networks include Findwhat, Shopping.com, NexTag, BizRate and PriceGrabber. Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0.01 (up to US$0.50). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Abuse of the pay per click model can result in click fraud.
PPC engines can be categorized in "Keyword", "Product", "Service" engines. However, a number of companies may fall in two or more categories. More models are continually being developed.
Keyword PPCs: Advertisers using these bid on "keywords", which can be words or phrases, and can include product model numbers. When a user searches for a particular word or phrase, the list of advertiser links appears in order of bidding.
As of 2005, notable PPC Keyword search engines include: Google AdWords, FindWhat, GoClick, 7Search, Kanoodle, ePilot, Search123, SearchFeed, Espotting, Xuppa, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Kazazz, Pricethat, Search FAST and others.
Product PPCs: "Product" engines let advertisers provide "feeds" of their product databases and when users search for a product, the links to the different advertisers for that particular product appear, giving more prominence to advertisers who pay more, but letting the user sort by price to see the lowest priced product and then click on it to buy. These engines are also called Product comparison engines or Price comparison engines.
Some of the PPC Product search engines are: BizRate, NexTag, PriceGrabber, Pricescan, Pricethat, Pricewatch, PriceLeap, Shopping.com
Service PPCs: "Service" engines let advertisers provide feeds of their service databases and when users search for a service offering links to advertisers for that particular product appear, giving prominence to advertisers who pay more, but letting users sort their results by price or other methods. Some Product PPCs have expanded into the service space while other service engines operate in specific verticals.
Examples: NexTag, Pricethat SideStep, TripAdvisor
Cost Per Click or CPC (as it is often initialized to) is a phrase often used in online advertising and online marketing circles.
With many advertising networks and websites, the advertiser is charged for advertising their ad (on the advertising network or website) only when a user clicks on their ad. How much they pay (for that click) is called their Cost Per Click or CPC.
The CPC can be determined by different factors, depending on which advertising network or website the advertiser is advertising on.