PPC (Pay Per Click)

PPC advertising involves contracting with a search engine to pay for users of the World Wide Web who click onto your site as a result of seeing a sponsored web listing.

Suppose you are seeking a provider of, say, Wills and you type in the words ‘making a will’ in Google.

A list of websites will appear on your screen. The first one, two or three which appear will have a light orange background and a description ‘Sponsored Links.’ A number of other sites, also described as ‘Sponsored Links,’ will be listed in a column on the right-hand side of the screen. All of these sites are contracted with Google to pay each any every time a web browser clicks onto the link and is thereby taken to that website – hence ‘pay per click.’

The amount paid for each click is not determined by Google – it is determined by the owners of the websites in question who bid competitively for the right to pay each time a person enters the search word or phrase in question – in this case the words ‘making a will.’

Bidders can set a budget to avoid “signing a blank cheque.” For example a firm might bid 10p per hit for a certain set of phrases they think searchers might use and commit a budget of say, £100. That will pay for a total of 1000 clicks and after that figure is exceeded they pay no more (and their site ceases to be sponsored).

The first advantage of PPC are that one can bid for a certain number of search phrases one thinks people will use, and it is possible to set a cap on what expenditure this will involve. Secondly, one can be reasonably sure the advertising money will not be ‘wasted’ as only those seriously interested will click onto the website.

The major disadvantage with PPC is that there are only a certain number of search phrases it is possible to come up with in relation to a Will. Competitors will also, of course, be able to come up with those same phrases and hence the cost per click may become rather high as each tries to outbid the others.