Have you noticed the captivating advertisements appearing besides Google’s search results? If you have, you’re already familiar with Pay Per Click advertising. That is an online advertising model used by advertisers in which they have to pay a small fee every time a user clicks on their online advertisement.
There are several distinct types of Pay Per Click ads, but the most common one is the pay search advertisement. Such ads appear when users search for different things online while using search engines like Google. These ads appear especially when people are doing commercial searches, meaning that they surf for things they are looking to buy. That includes searching for a local service, mobile phones, gift ideas or technical things. Such searches tend to trigger PPC ads. In PPC advertising, businesses that are running ads online only have to pay when someone clicks on their advertisement, and that’s where the name “pay per click” is derived. Other types of Pay Per Click advertising include remarketing and display advertising.
How Does PPC Work?
For your advertisements to appear beside the search engine results page (SERP), paying more to highlight your ads and ensure that they appear prominently that competitors are not enough. Instead, advertisements are subject to the Ad Auction. That is a completely automated process that search engines like Google use to determine the validity and relevance of ads that show up on their Search engine results pages.
The role of keywords in PPC:
As the name implies, Ad Auction is like a bidding system. That means the advertiser’s bid on terms that will display or trigger their advertisements. Such terms are referred to as keywords. For example, let’s assume that your company specialises in camping equipment. If a user wants to purchase a portable stove, sleeping bag or a new tent, he/she will enter “camping equipment” as the keyword into the search engine to look for retailers that are providing these products.
When the user ends up submitting their search query, the search engine performs a complex algorithmic calculation on which the AD auction is based. That determines which advertisements should get displayed and what should be their order.
It’s essential to only bid on relevant keywords because you will pay for every single click on the ad. That way, you can ensure to get the maximum ROI from your advertisement. You can take help from a keyword tool to find suitable keywords that will drive your conversions or sales up and won’t be so costly.

What Do Pay Per Click Advertisements Look Like?
Most of the PPC advertisements appear in SERPs, but not all of them. There are three primary types of PPC ads:
- Text Ads:
The advertiser composes a written copy in a text and—the character limits and format depending upon the PPC platform being used. Text advertisements are usually triggered by the search network, meaning that users search for a keyword on Google that is part of your PPC campaign.
- Display Ads:
A display advertisement is composed using the format of a motion or image graphic. Pay Per Click platforms offering display advertising usually have content and size requirements that advertisers need to comply with while creating their display ad. Such advertisements usually show up, and they are available for advertising placement on various websites over the internet. Advertisements are placed contextually on websites when the target market of the advertiser frequently visits.
- Shopping Ads:
Shopping advertising commonly appears once a user submits a search query on a search or shopping engine. Shopping ads generally contain the product’s price, an image and any other pertinent specifications such as dimensions, colour and size.
What are the Major Pay Per Click Platforms?
Multiple platforms offer display, shopping and display Pay Per Click ad placement. However, there are some core platforms no one can ignore.
- Google Ads:
The most primary PPC advertising platform is Google ads. Google offers PPC advertising on its search partner sites and video and image advertising on its display network. You can also advertise on YouTube using the Google advertising platform.
- Microsoft Advertising:
Microsoft advertising is a commonly used PPC advertising platform. This platform lets advertisers display PPC ads on its search partner sites and search network with the typical advertising on MSN with Microsoft-owned web properties.
- Amazon Advertising:
More than 46% of searches that are focused on products begin on Amazon. Amazon advertising is a rapidly emerging Pay Per Click Platform for many E-commerce retailers. Amazon allows advertisers to create shopping band display focused campaigns that promote their products on the shopping network of Amazon.
Is PPC the perfect strategy for your business? Here are four reasons it’s a must to add this to your online Strategy:
- It’s targeted:
You have the choice to choose your audience. You can precisely select who can see your advertisements based on keywords, language, type of device, location, age, interests and gender. That allows you to advertise your services and products directly to customers who are likely to show interest in your offering. You can also retarget your previous visitors. On average, only two people will turn into customers out of every 100 users that visit a website. That suggests that 98% of initial traffic goes down the drain. Retargeting lets advertisers remind people leaving the website without buying something to come back and check out what they’re missing out on.
- It is cost-effective:
It’s cost-effective because you only have to pay a fee to the search engine when someone clicks on your ad. While considering that the top three advertising spots on a SERP get most of the clicks, you’ll realise that the odds are in your favour. Pay Per Click allows your company to be at the top of SERPs even above organic results.
- You can track it:
That suggests you can monitor your advertisements’ performance and adjust them if you’re not getting the number of clicks you were expecting. You always know which of your ads are driving up the sales and helping your business and which ones are not.
- It’s fast:
It’s crucial to rank high on organic search engine results pages, but it can take time to get there. However, with PPC, you can easily put up a new advertisement and start seeing its outcomes in a matter of hours or days.
If you search for something that will boost your sales and immediately attract greater traffic to your website, give Pay Per Clicks deep thought. After all, PPC helps your site get all the attention it deserves from users that appreciate it the most.