What is PPC?

 Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is a complex digital marketing channel. It presents a significant opportunity for digital marketers to grow their traffic and conversion metrics. But without a smart strategy and careful tactics, pay-per-click can cause major headaches. We’ve put together the answers to some of the most common questions we get asked to better explain PPC marketing.

What is PPC Marketing?

Pay-per-click marketing is an advertising channel where marketers don’t pay by the impression or purely for ad placement. The bid amount may affect placement, but the advertiser only pays when their ad is clicked by an online user. The most common PPC ad format appears on search results pages of search engines like Google or Bing. Advertisers have the opportunity to place their brand, product, or service front and center in the form of an ad that targets a specific keyword or behavior.

What Do PPC Ads Look Like?

Most PPC ads appear in search results, but not all. There are three main types of pay-per-click marketing ads.

Text Ads

A text ad is composed of a written copy by the advertiser. Format and character limits are dependant on the PPC platform you are working on. Text ads are most commonly triggered through the Search Network- when users search on Google or Bing for a keyword held within your PPC campaign. We’ll get to how keywords and ads are selected later on this page.

What are the Major PPC Platforms?

Countless platforms offer text, display, and shopping PPC ad placement but there are three core platforms you can’t ignore:

Google Ads

Google Ads is Google’s primary PPC advertising platform. Google offers pay-per-click advertising on its Search Network and search partner sites along with image and video advertising on its Display Network. Advertising on YouTube is available through the Google Ads platform.

Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft Advertising (formally Bing Ads) is Microsoft’s PPC advertising platform. The platform allows pay-per-click advertising on its Search Network (Bing.com) and search partner sites (including Yahoo.com) along with native advertising on Microsoft-owned web properties (such as MSN).

Amazon Advertising

Over 46% of product-focused searches begin on Amazon. Amazon Advertising is the fastest-emerging PPC platform for e-commerce retailers. Amazon empowers advertisers to create display- and shopping-focused campaigns that promote their products on Amazon’s shopping network.

Display Advertising for Top-of-Funnel Marketing Strategies

If want to drive awareness and interest, pay-per-click ads on display networks are a solid option. Display Network and display ad strategies are geared for advertisers who want to get in front of potential customers who are starting research, aren’t ready to buy, but may remember a brand for later purchase.

PPC display is top-of-funnel, but it’s still targetable while still allowing creative freedom. Not only can you take advantage of user targeting options to help ensure your ads show to the right people, but you can also use image and video assets to capture a user’s attention. These creative options provide the opportunity to stand out from your competitors and convey a message effectively, creating new potential customers and growing the size of your sales funnel from the top down.

Display Networks typically offer lower average cost-per-click figures, allowing advertisers to get a higher number of impressions and clicks compared to the Search Network. However, display network traffic is typically lower in quality than from the Search Network when looking at the intent of those visitors.

Search Network and Shopping Campaigns for Mid- and Low-Funnel Strategies

Potential customers are searching for your brand or the products and/or services you offer. They’re either aware of a problem and searching how to solve it, aware of a solution and searching for which businesses can help them, or aware of your brand and searching for you specifically. They are in the desire and action portions of the marketing funnel.

Pay-per-click ads through the Search Network will help ensure you’re fully visible, front and center on a SERP when users submit these queries. Search Network and Shopping traffic is typically more expensive than the display network, but searches are much further down the funnel—that means they’re more likely to convert on what you’re offering.

What are the Basic Components of a Search Network Campaign?

Search Network campaigns contain a large handful of components required to enable eligible ads on search engines like Google and Bing. Let’s take a look at those components: 

Campaigns

A campaign is the highest level of organization with a PPC account. Each campaign you create will house a set of ad groups, each of which in turn house a list of keywords and corresponding text ads. All settings which govern your ads (location targeting or ad scheduling being just two examples) are set at the campaign level. Furthermore, each campaign you create will have a daily budget.

To learn more about the various settings you can take advantage of within a given campaign, take a look at part one of our guide to building a Google Ads account.

Ad Groups

As mentioned above, each ad group you create will contain a list of keywords along with a corresponding set of ads which are eligible to show when one of those keywords is triggered in an auction. Your keyword lists should be granular and tightly-themed so you can keep your account well organized and tailor your ad copy closely to your keywords. This will help improve any ad’s relevance to the keywords it’s tied to and maximize quality scores.

However you decide to separate your ad groups, it should be done consistently throughout each campaign. For example, if you have a campaign for each category on your website, you can differentiate each ad group by sub-category. You can, of course, adapt that ad group’s structure as needed based on performance over time.

To understand the importance of structure to your ad groups and campaigns, see part two of our guide to building a Google Ads account.