What Is PPC Advertising and How Does a PPC Campaign Work?

PPC advertising (pay per click) is paid online advertising where you pay not when your ad is shown but when someone clicks it. The best-known example is text ads in Google Ads search results. The term is also used loosely for performance advertising in general, including social media, where you often pay for impressions instead. PPC works quickly, but the visits stop when you stop paying.

Summary

• PPC means paying per click. Google also calls it CPC.
• Ads can appear in search, Shopping, YouTube, on websites, on social media and on price comparison sites.
• On Facebook and Instagram, Meta says you are usually charged for impressions, not clicks.
• A campaign rests on four things: a goal, keywords or an audience, the ad and the landing page.
• Without conversion tracking you cannot tell whether ads pay off. Track cost per conversion (CPA) and, for online shops, ROAS.

What is PPC advertising?

Google notes that cost-per-click (CPC) pricing is sometimes known as pay-per-click (PPC). Under this model, Google charges you only when someone clicks your ad and goes to your website. You set the most you are willing to pay for a click, and the actual cost is often lower.

An auction decides whether and where your ad appears every time someone searches. The highest bid does not automatically win: the quality of the ad and the landing page count too. We explain the auction and what drives click prices in How Much Do Google Ads Cost?.

In practice, "PPC" is used for paid advertising in general, including ads charged per impression. A short definition is in our glossary.

Where do PPC ads appear?

Google Ads. Google offers several campaign types:

• Search: text ads in Google search results when people look for the products and services you offer.
• Shopping: product listings in search results and on the Shopping tab. You need a Merchant Center account with your products uploaded.
• Video: video ads on YouTube and other websites.
• Display: image ads on websites, in apps and on Google properties such as YouTube.
• Performance Max: a single campaign across all Google Ads inventory, run by AI towards your conversion goals.

Meta (Facebook, Instagram). Meta sells ads on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and the Meta Audience Network. According to Meta, you are usually charged for the number of impressions unless you choose otherwise when creating the ad. Strictly speaking, it is not always PPC. When Google suits you better and when Meta does, we compare in Google Ads or Facebook and Instagram: Where to Put Your First Ad Budget.

LinkedIn. With the maximum delivery and cost cap strategies, LinkedIn charges by impressions. With manual bidding, it may charge for impressions, landing page clicks, engagement clicks, sends or video views, depending on the objective and ad format.

TikTok. TikTok Ads Manager offers four bidding methods: CPM, optimised CPM (oCPM), CPV and CPC. oCPM is the default for the conversions objective.

Microsoft Advertising. Ads can show on Bing, other Microsoft properties and partner sites, and you pay only when someone clicks your ad.

Price comparison sites. Comparison sites charge per click too. Heureka.sk, for example, charges online shops per click, with the price depending on the product's price.

Which platform first? Put simply, search catches demand that already exists, while social media can create it. If customers already search for you on Google, start there. If they do not know your offer yet, try Facebook and Instagram. For an online shop, consider Shopping and comparison sites; for B2B services, LinkedIn.

PPC, CPC, CPM: what is the difference?

PPC is the advertising model; CPC is the price you pay within it. When choosing a bid strategy, Google sorts the options by what you want: clicks, impressions, conversions or views.

With Target CPA, you set the average amount you want to pay per conversion and Google adjusts bids accordingly. CPC and CPM are also in the glossary.

How does a PPC campaign work, step by step?

1. Account and billing. You open an ad account, for example in Google Ads, and add your billing details.
2. Goal. Decide what the ads should deliver: a purchase, a form enquiry, a phone call or a store visit. The goal shapes the campaign type and bid strategy.
3. Keywords or audience. In search, you choose keywords. The match type sets how closely they must match a search. Broad match is the default, so ads can show on related searches too. A garage in Nitra might choose terms like "tyre change Nitra" and exclude words such as "second-hand" or "how to". On social media, you choose an audience instead.
4. Ad. Text, image or video that answers what the person is looking for and says clearly what you offer.
5. Landing page. Google rates landing page experience: whether the page is clear, useful and related to the search. The page must deliver what the ad promised.
6. Conversion tracking. With conversion measurement, you decide what counts as valuable, such as a purchase, sign-up or call. Google then shows which keywords, ads and campaigns drive those actions. For visitors from the EEA, you must collect consent and send consent signals to Google for measurement and remarketing.
7. Budget and ongoing management. You set a daily budget and review the campaign regularly. Google recommends signing in at least once a week and allowing 30 minutes to an hour.

What is the difference between PPC and SEO?

Both bring visits from search, in different ways. With PPC, you pay per click. With SEO, you pay the search engine nothing: Google does not accept payment to rank pages higher in unpaid results, and ranking is done programmatically.

They work best together. PPC data shows which searches bring customers, and SEO can build on them for the long term. See how we approach it on our SEO and AI search page. How SEO is changing with AI answers is covered in SEO vs GEO.

Who is PPC advertising for, and when is it not?

PPC pays off when:

• people already search for your service or product, such as "washing machine repair Nitra"
• you need results now: a new location, a season, a sale
• you sell online and have a product feed for Shopping or comparison sites
• you want to test quickly whether there is interest in a new offer.

Hold off on PPC when:

• you have no page that can turn a visitor into an enquiry or sale
• you have no tracking and will not know what the ads delivered
• your margin cannot absorb what it costs to win a customer
• nobody searches for your offer yet. Then you need to create demand first, for example with Facebook and Instagram ads, which reach people while they browse.

How do you measure PPC success?

Clicks and impressions show whether anyone saw the ad. Success is decided by conversions, the actions you want visitors to take.

• Conversions: the number of purchases, enquiries or calls from ads.
• CPA (cost per conversion): ad spend divided by conversions. Compare it with what a customer is worth to you.
• ROAS: ad revenue divided by ad spend. For online shops, this is the key figure. Google's Target ROAS strategy predicts the value of a conversion and adjusts bids to match. More on ROAS in the glossary.
• CTR (click-through rate): the share of people who clicked the ad. A low CTR suggests the ad does not match the search.

An illustration: if you spend €300 on ads in a month and get 10 enquiries, your CPA is €30. If three of them become jobs with €200 profit each, the ads paid off. An online shop that sells €1,200 of goods from €300 of ads has a ROAS of 4. Whether that is enough depends on margin: at a 20% margin, €1,200 of revenue leaves €240, less than the ads cost.

Count enquiries yourself as well, in your inbox or CRM. Some people decline tracking consent, so ad account figures will be incomplete.

What are common PPC mistakes?

• No conversion tracking. The budget gets spent and nobody knows what it delivered.
• Broad match with no checks. Review the search terms report, which shows actual searches, and exclude irrelevant terms with negative keywords.
• Every ad leads to the home page. Each service or category needs its own landing page.
• Judging by cost per click. A cheap click that never converts costs more than a pricier one that sells.
• Targeting all of Slovakia when you serve one region.
• Set and forget. A campaign without weekly checks spends money on searches that do not sell.

If your campaigns are running and you are not sure they work, a PPC audit can help.

Frequently asked questions

What does PPC stand for?

Pay per click. You pay when someone clicks your ad, not when it is shown.

Is PPC the same as Google Ads?

No. Google Ads is the best-known platform that uses PPC. Microsoft Advertising and price comparison sites offer it too, as do TikTok and LinkedIn with some settings.

How much does PPC advertising cost?

There is no fixed price list. You set the budget and an auction sets the click price. For Google, see How Much Do Google Ads Cost?.

Is Facebook advertising PPC?

Not always. Meta usually charges for impressions unless you choose otherwise when creating the ad. In everyday use, though, these ads are called PPC too.

Can PPC replace SEO?

No. PPC brings visits while you pay. SEO builds visits from unpaid results over time. Most businesses need both, in different proportions.

Want to know whether PPC makes sense for you? See our paid media service, Google Ads management or ask for a free marketing diagnostic.