Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is an online advertising model where advertisers pay a fee each time someone clicks their ad, rather than paying for the impression. It lets businesses buy targeted visits instead of earning them organically.
In depth
PPC runs as a real-time auction: when a user triggers an ad slot, the platform ranks competing advertisers by their bid and an estimated quality signal, then charges the winner only when the click happens. Your effective cost is shaped by relevance, expected click-through rate, and landing-page experience, so a sharper offer and a faster page can lower what you pay per visitor. This is why PPC rewards tight alignment between keyword intent, ad copy, and the destination the click lands on.
The common pitfall is optimizing for cheap clicks instead of qualified leads, which fills your funnel with traffic that never converts. In a quiz-funnel workflow, a PPC click should land on a scorecard quiz rather than a static page: the quiz qualifies and segments the visitor in real time, captures contact data, and tells you which campaigns produce high-scoring leads. Feeding that score back into bidding lets you spend more on the keywords that produce buyers, not just browsers.
Example in practice
Frequently asked questions
How is PPC different from CPC?
PPC is the advertising model where you pay per click, while CPC (cost-per-click) is the metric that measures the actual price you pay for each click. In short, PPC is the pricing approach and CPC is the number you track and optimize.
What is a good PPC conversion rate?
It varies widely by industry, but many B2B SaaS landing pages convert paid clicks at 2 to 5 percent. Routing clicks into an interactive quiz funnel often pushes conversion higher because it qualifies visitors before asking for contact details.
Which platforms support PPC advertising?
Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising dominate search PPC, while Meta, LinkedIn, and TikTok offer PPC-style pricing on social and display inventory. Each platform sets prices through an auction based on bid, relevance, and expected engagement.