PPC stands for Pay Per Click, an online advertising model where advertisers place their ads on platforms like Google Ads and pay each time someone clicks. The purpose of this ad is to direct users to click on the advertiser's website or app. Users can perform valuable actions such as: buying products or fill-up a form.
Search engines are common host platforms as they allow advertisers to show ads related to what users are looking for. Advertising services such as Google Ads and Microsoft Ads use real-time bidding (RTB), which uses real-time data to sell inventory in private, automated auctions.
Key terms to understand before starting your PPC journey
Search Engine Marketing (SEM): SEM is a type of digital marketing strategy focused on getting a business or client on the first page, if not the first position in search engine results. The aim is to drive more traffic to your website so you can convert it.
Impressions: An impression is when a user sees an ad. In fact, an impression is created every time a user opens your app or website and sees an ad.
Clicks: When someone clicks on your ad, advertising platforms (Google Ads) counts it as a click. A click is considered even if the person does not reach your website, possibly because it's temporarily unreachable.
Cost Per Click (CPC): CPC is a digital advertising revenue model where the advertisement platform charges the advertisers based on the number of times users click on an ad listed or placed to their website.
Cost Per Mille (CPM): CPM also known as Cost per Thousand Impressions and is usually used in assessing how many thousands of people your ad or marketing piece has left an impression on or is viewed. CPM is typically applied in campaigns that are created to be seen by thousands of thousands of people.
Click through Rate (CTR): CTR is the number of clicks that your ad gets divided by the number of times your ad is displayed. The calculation of the CTR can be represented as: Clicks ÷ Impressions = CTR. For e.g., if you had 50 clicks and 1000 impressions, then your CTR would be 5%.
Ad Rank: Ad Rank is a value that's used to decide where ads are displayed on a page compared to other ads, and whether your ads will appear at all. Your Ad Rank is recalculated every time your ad is eligible to show.
Quality Score: Quality Score is Google’s measure of how applicable a keyword is based on data available from previous ad auctions. Google creates your Quality Score, which ranges from 1-10, by estimating your ads’ landing page experience, CTR and keywords.
Bid: Bid is the maximum amount of money an advertiser is ready to pay for a cost-per-click (CPC) ad.
Targeting: Targeting helps advertiser to show an ad to a particular audience as specifically as possible. Selecting the right keywords is what allows advertisers to show ads to appropriate audience.
Keywords: Keywords are words or phrases that users enter in the search engines to find content related to their queries.
Frequency: Frequency is the number of times a user saw an ad in your Display or Video campaign in each time-range.
Landing page: A landing page is an individual webpage that a prospective customers can click to “land on” from an email, ad, or other digital placement.
Conversion: Conversion are events that are tracked and recorded when a campaign goal or interaction is completed. Often this means a sale.
Types of PPC Campaigns
Search: Paid search ad is one of the most common forms of PPC advertisings where brands pay (using an auction-based model) to have their ads listed above and below organic search engine results when users are searching for specific keywords.
Display: Display advertising is a method of convincing website visitors, social media platform or other digital channels to take a certain action. These often consist of text, image or video ads that encourage users to visiting the landing page and take a desired action (such as a purchase).
Remarketing: Remarketing means engaging an audience that has already interacted with your brand, to persuade them to take a desired action, such as conversion.
Video: Video ads are a marketing strategy that comprises creating short, informative videos that promote your product and can be played before, during, or after the main video.
Shopping: A type of ad that provides detailed information about a specific product you want to sell.
Main PPC Platforms
Google Ads: Google Ads is the most prevalent advertising network due to its search volume on the Google search engine and the available reach of its ads on the Google Display Network (GDN). Billions of searches happen every day using Google’s search engine.
Microsoft Ads: The Microsoft Search Network records 12.2 billion PC searches per month. Microsoft Ads gives advertisers tools to import campaigns from Google Ads, making it easy to start working on. Microsoft has the advantage of solely serving Yahoo search traffic, supporting multiple digital assistants for voice search, and being able to target searchers using LinkedIn profile data such as company, job function, and industry.
YouTube: YouTube reaches over 2 billion logged-in users monthly across the globe, making it a great opportunity for advertisers to effectively reach their audience through the platform. Campaign creation and management can be done through Google Ads platform, with more detailed information about audience demographics and engagement through YouTube Analytics in you YouTube account.
Facebook: As one of the most used social media platforms, around 2.6 billion people login Facebook every month. User targeting can be very precise with demographics, interest, etc. Facebook allows retargeting based on user activity on Facebook and off Facebook actions through advertisers’ Facebook pixel data and customer lists uploaded in the Facebook ad manager.
Instagram: Instagram has more than 1 billion active users who are most likely to be younger than Facebook users. As a Facebook company, campaign creation and management are managed through the Facebook Ads platform. While Facebook suggests using Automatic Placements (targeting all placements in your campaign), this can simply set to any placement the advertiser would prefer.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn have more than 500 million professionals, and they can all be targeted by professional criteria, such as job title, job seniority, company name, etc.
Twitter: Twitter is used by 330 million active users monthly; it offers numerous options to reach users through the platform. Unlike other platforms, Twitter ads are totally contained on Twitter without any network partners. Promoted tweets are possibly one of the most flexible ad formats as they can include any combinations of text and other media that comply with the general policies.
Pinterest: Pinterest has 200 million active monthly users who are exploring trends, ideas, and products, and most of them are looking to buy.
Regardless of the time you have started your business, PPC can be the boost you might require to get an edge on your competition — or at least put you ahead of them in the SERPs.