Understanding the Difference between Pay Per Click and Pay Per Impression

SEO Design — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 07:41:44 +0000

Many companies, businesses and organizations conduct some or most of their businesses online. Anyone running a business will know how beneficial it can be exposing your business to the online community. For this reason, marketing and advertising services and products online has boomed enormously. This has developed various marketing tools such as affiliate programming, SEO, social media websites to name but a few. These marketing tools help businesses to expose their services and products to potential customers while creating more traffic which results in an increase in sales. Paid searches are also a marketing tool implemented by many companies. This category of online marketing can be further divided into two sub-groups; pay per impression and pay per click. It is important understanding the difference between pay per click and pay per impression so that you will be able to make an informed marketing decision based on the needs of your business.

Understanding the difference between pay per click and pay per impression – paid searches explained

Paid searches involve using search engines and the results they output. Unlike search engine optimization which can require diligent, hard work for a prolonged period of time before your business ends up on the first page, paid searches work differently. By paying for your advert, it can end up on the first results page immediately. These adverts will generally appear at the top of a results page, within social media sites or near related articles. Although there are costs involved, many businesses view paid searches as an useful method to help improve and drive more traffic towards their website.

Understanding pay per Click

The fundamentals of pay per click, otherwise known as cost per click, is that each time an advert is ‘clicked’ on, payment is due from the advertiser. Essentially, only when a businesses’ advert leads to a user being lead to their website, do they pay for it. How much this will be will depend; many cost-per-click adverts are bid for, which helps business’s stay within their budget while having control over when and where they are will be placed. Depending on your keywords used will depend how competitive that space you require will be.

Understanding pay per impression

Pay per impression works somewhat differently to pay per click. Pay per impression can also be referred to as cost per mille. In this instance impression refers to the visual display of the advert where nothing more is required unlike pay per click. These ad spaces or banners are placed according to the agreement between businesses, whether it is on a search engine results page, or a prominent website. Payment is made based on assumption of how many impressions that ad will receive – which as a general rule of thumb is set at 1000 – which is why it is known as cost per mille. This form of advertising can be relatively inexpensive and is believed to be effective business exposure in the long-term. If an advert is compelling enough for a user and they ‘click’ on the advert, then cost per click comes into play. Combining pay per impression and cost per click can help generate better results than used singularly on their own.

Paid searches can become a valuable asset to a business but it is important to view them from all angles as some view paid advertising to be not as impressive as building your business through reputation and hard work. However, these marketing tools can become a significant part of a broader marketing plan which is why understanding the difference between pay per click and pay per impression is important. The more knowledge you have about these various online marketing tools, the more you will be able to make the right decisions for your business.

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Understanding the Difference between Pay Per Click and Pay Per Impression