What Is PPC?

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an advertising model that lets advertisers place ads on an advertisement platform and pay the host of the platform when their ad is clicked.

The goal of the ad is to lead the user who clicks to the advertiser’s website or app, where the user can complete a valuable action such as purchasing a product.

Search engines are popular host platforms as they allow advertisers to display ads relevant to what users are searching for.

Advertising services like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads operate with real-time bidding (RTB), where advertising inventory is sold in a private automated auction using real-time data.

How Paid Search Works

Every time there is an ad spot on a search engine results page (SERP), an auction takes place for the keyword instantaneously.

A combination of multiple factors, including bid amount and the quality of the ad, decide the winner who will appear in the top position.

These auctions are what keeps the gears of PPC moving. They begin when someone searches for something on a search engine.

If there are advertisers interested in showing ads related to a user’s search query, an auction is triggered based on keywords that are bid on by advertisers.

The ads that win the auction then appear on the search engine results page.

To get involved in these auctions, advertisers use accounts on platforms like Google Ads to set up their ads and determine where and when they would like those ads to appear.

Accounts are split into campaigns for ease of management and reporting of different locations, product types, or other useful categorization.

Campaigns are further divided into ad groups that contain keywords and relevant ads.