Pay per Click (PPC)

Pay per Click, or PPC for short, is an online advertising billing model in which advertisers only pay for an advert when a user clicks on it. Served impressions without a click are free. The model is the default for search engine advertising and for many display and social campaigns.

How the price is determined

In most ad systems the click price is set through an auction process. Advertisers submit a maximum bid per click, and the actual price is determined by competing bids and a quality factor. With Google Ads, the Quality Score plays a major role, since well rated ads often pay less than the highest bidding competitors.

Pros and cons

PPC is transparent and easy to control, since you know exactly what each visitor costs. Risks include click fraud and inefficient clicks from users who never convert. If you run PPC, you should have clean conversion tracking, negative keywords and well maintained landing pages, otherwise budget gets burned on visitors who buy nothing.

PPC in the JD Partner and JD Mail mix

Within the JD Partner ecosystem, cost per click is a common billing model for advertisers who buy reach inside third party newsletters. The advert slot inside the mailing is billed per actual click on the link, not per send. JD Mail reliably captures all clicks on ad links and supplies the data as the basis for billing.