PPC Management

Pay-per-click (PPC) is a model used in internet advertising where advertisers pay the hosting website whenever their advertisements are clicked on. In this model, advertisers place the content of their websites in order to attract their target web traffic. The charges can either be on bid keywords or as fixed prices paid for every click. The cost-per-click (CPC) refers to the amount of money that advertisers pay to search engines or other publishers for each click on the advertisement hosted on their website.  
 
As opposed to the general portals that target driving huge amounts of traffic to a single site, PPC uses the affiliate model to give purchase opportunities to web visitors. The use financial incentives (percentage revenue) to affiliate sites mean that more sites are willing to direct traffic to the site. On their part, the affiliates give points to merchants per each click thus enacting a pay-per-performance model. This means that if the affiliate fails to generate any sales, this does not cost the merchant in any way. Affiliate models are well suited for the web, and for this reason, they are very popular.  Variations of this model include revenue sharing programs and banner exchange between sites.   
 
Websites which use PPC advertisements display it whenever a keyword query fits in the keyword list provided by the advertiser. It is also displayed if the content is relevant to the keywords.  These types of adverts are known as sponsored ads or sponsored links. They usually appear above or along organic search engine results or other places on a content site as chosen by the web developer.    
 
Currently Google Adwords, Microsoft AdCenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing are the three main operators in the PPC market operating on a bid-based concept. In addition to these key players, there are numerous other entities in the same market. Overall however, the cost-per-click mode of payment varies greatly depending on the search engine used and the competition that the specific keyword attracts. 
   
Challenges faced by the PPC model include exposure to click frauds where competitors can launch abusive click. Lately however search engines have developed automated systems, which guard against such vices as well as web developers who are corrupt. Although the automated-bid management concept is commonly used in PPC bids, it can also be used directly by advertisers who want to achieve a high success rate. The automated bidding systems enable the advertisers to control large amounts of bids with the automated system.