Pay-per-Click advertising, or PPC, is an online advertising strategy that drives traffic to websites by having advertisers pay publishers every time their ad is clicked on by a user. Advertisers select a budget and bid a certain dollar amount on keywords they are willing to pay for 1 click to their website. The cost per click, or CPC, of specific keywords, varies widely based on how competitive the keyword is, how much traffic or searches those keywords receive and the potential revenue gain from converting that lead. The overall quality of the ad also determines how likely users are to click on it, driving down the cost per click for advertisers.
PPC is most often associated with search engines (Google Ads, Bing Ads, Yahoo Ads, Amazon Ads) and social media ads (Facebook advertising, Twitter advertising, Linkedin advertising).