Pay-per-click advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and campaigns are the premier way of advertising on the internet. A PPC campaign lets you determine exactly who comes to your website. Additionally, an important advantage is that you only pay for actual click throughs to your site. In other words, you only pay if a person clicks on a link or banner and lands on your site (also called pay-for-performance advertising). If the person only sees your link, but does not click through, this is called an impression. You should not pay for impressions.

Using clickstream analysis, a tracking system will tell you what people do on your site once they arrive through PPC advertising. This information is necessary to manage your advertising, and determine the best ways to:
1. obtain quality traffic
2. ensure that visitors are converted into customers
3. stimulate action that brings revenue

PPC advertising is based on keyword selection. The entire internet advertising market revolves around choosing the correct search terms and keywords. Well managed PPC advertising will bring traffic that achieves your goal, or 'desired outcome', whether it is to publicise an event or sell goods and services.

Quality is more important than quantity: ‘Quality’ traffic refers to traffic that is well-targeted. This means that the visitors:
1. are looking for what you are advertising
2. enter the site and look around
3. complete a transaction or become a lead (i.e. convert)
4. come from countries and regions that you are interested in
5. return to visit your site again

Quality traffic will bring you a higher percentage of success, in terms of seeing your visitors complete a transaction, or subscribe to the service that you provide.

List of companies who sell PPC traffic: Google, Enhance (ah-ha), Overture, FindWhat, Kanoodle, ePilot, LookSmart, Search123, eSpotting.

Source: http://www.opentracker.net/en/articles/pay-per-click-ppc.jsp