PPC stands for pay-per-click, which is an online advertising model used to drive traffic to websites. In this model, an advertiser pays a publisher every time a user clicks on one of their ads. Essentially, youre paying for targeted visits to your website, landing page, or app. PPC ads come in different shapes and sizes, such as text, images, videos, or a combination, and can appear on search engines, websites, social media platforms, and more.

PPC advertising allows marketers to target specific demographics, interests, and locations, which helps to reach the right audience. Advertisers create campaigns that target specific keywords or phrases that they want their ads to appear for in search engine results. When a user searches for one of those keywords or phrases, the advertisers ad will appear among the top results, and the advertiser is then charged a fee each time a user clicks on their ad.

PPC is usually associated with first-tier search engines, but social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok, and Twitter have also adopted pay-per-click as one of their advertising models. PPC display advertisements, also known as banner ads, are shown on websites with related content that have agreed to show ads and are typically not pay-per-click advertising, but instead, usually charge on a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) .

PPC is considered to be beneficial for both advertisers and publishers. For advertisers, the model is advantageous because it provides an opportunity to advertise products or services to a specific audience who is actively searching for related content. In addition, a well-designed PPC advertising campaign allows an advertiser to save a substantial amount of money as the value of each visit (click) from a potential customer exceeds the cost of the click paid to a publisher. For publishers, the pay-per-click model provides a primary revenue stream.