PPC is the model behind Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and most paid social: you pay when someone clicks, not when the ad is shown. Here is how it works.
PPC stands for pay-per-click, an advertising model where you pay only when someone clicks your ad. Google Ads is the biggest PPC platform: you bid on search terms, your ad appears above the organic results when someone searches them, and you pay the going rate for each click. Done well, PPC produces leads within days and can be tracked to the dollar.
Every time someone searches on Google, an auction runs in milliseconds for the ad spots above and below the results. Advertisers have told Google which search terms they want to appear for and the most they will pay per click. Google ranks the ads by bid multiplied by a quality score (how relevant the ad and landing page are to the search), shows the winners, and charges each advertiser only when their ad is clicked.
So the three things you control are the search terms you target, the bid you set and the quality of your ad and landing page. The last one is where most of the money is won or lost: a relevant ad pointing to a page that matches the search gets a higher position at a lower cost than a generic ad pointing to a homepage.
The same model runs on Microsoft Ads, on shopping ads, and with variations on Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube, where targeting is by audience rather than by search term. What is Google Ads covers the Google-specific side.
You pay per click, and the price per click (CPC) varies enormously: a few cents for low-competition terms, far more for terms where many businesses compete and a customer is worth a lot, such as legal, insurance, HVAC replacement or dental implants. What is cost per click explains what drives the price.
But clicks are not the point. The number that matters is cost per lead: your spend divided by the calls and forms the clicks produced. Two campaigns with the same CPC can have wildly different costs per lead depending on how well the landing page converts. That is why PPC needs call tracking and form tracking from day one; without them you are paying for clicks and guessing at results.
A separate line is management: if an agency runs the account, their fee is separate from the ad spend that goes to Google. Keep the two apart when comparing proposals, as covered in how to choose a digital marketing agency.
PPC buys placement; SEO earns it. A PPC ad appears the day the campaign launches and disappears the day the budget stops. An organic ranking takes months to build and then keeps producing without a per-click cost. PPC gives you precise control over which searches, areas, hours and budget; SEO you influence but do not control. PPC cost per lead stays flat or rises over time; SEO cost per lead falls as rankings compound.
Most businesses with search demand end up running both: PPC for leads now and for the high-value terms where they want to appear twice, SEO for the long tail and the lower cost per lead over time. The full comparison, including which to start with, is in is SEO better than Google Ads.
PPC makes sense when people search for what you sell, you know what a customer is worth, and you need leads sooner than SEO can deliver. It is the fastest way to test a new service, fill a slow season or launch a new location. It makes less sense when searches for your service barely exist, when a customer is worth too little to cover the click cost, or when the basics (website, tracking, follow-up) are not ready to turn clicks into customers.
A good setup has a few recognizable parts: campaigns organized by service, tight keyword lists with negative keywords to block irrelevant searches, ads that match the search, landing pages that match the ads, conversion tracking for calls and forms, and a weekly review of search terms and cost per lead. Missing any one of those is where budgets leak.
If you want to see what managed PPC includes, the Google Ads management page is the hub for every paid-search answer, and is Google Ads worth it helps you decide whether it fits your business.
REALTOP founder Nik Tsoukales on the same question, from the agency’s YouTube channel.
You choose the search terms or audiences you want to reach, set a maximum bid, and write ads that point to a landing page. An auction runs each time the ad could show, ranking advertisers by bid and ad quality. You are charged only when someone clicks, at a price set by the auction.
PPC buys ad placement and produces leads within days, but stops when you stop paying and costs the same per click over time. SEO earns organic rankings over months, then keeps producing leads at a falling cost per lead. Most businesses with search demand use both.
Read the full answerNot exactly. PPC is the pricing model, paying per click. Google Ads is the largest platform that uses it, alongside Microsoft Ads, Meta, LinkedIn and others. When people say PPC in a small business context they usually mean Google search ads, but the term covers any pay-per-click platform.
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