What is PPC Advertising?
- Mar 9
- 8 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Ahhh one of our favourite questions!
PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, it is a digital advertising strategy where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked.
It is a way of gaining clicks (and by extension, conversions) to your website rather than earning them organically.
PPC is one of those marketing buzzwords that gets thrown around a lot, but what does it actually all mean? In this guide we’ll break it down in plain English covering:
How does PPC advertising work?
In the world of PPC advertising, it all starts with keywords. Advertisers bid on search terms that are relevant to their target audience. When someone types one of those terms into a search engine (e.g. Google), an auction happens in milliseconds. If your ad wins that auction, congratulations, you’ve secured a prime spot at the top of the search results!
If that click leads to a sale or enquiry worth more than what you paid, you’re making a profit.
Google Ads is the largest search engine and most popular platform for running PPC campaigns - dominating over 90% of the global market share, seeing over 8 billion searches per day.
But how exactly do you win a PPC bid?
Winning a PPC bid isn’t just about throwing the most money at it. PPC auctions are quite a bit more complicated, with multiple factors.
Winning an Google ad auction comes down to a combination of:
Ad relevance - How closely your ad (and the landing page you’re directing people to) matches what the user is actually searching for. The better the match, the better your chances. This is where we can reduce CPCs (Cost-Per-Click), improving your Quality Scores.
Strategic bid management - Bidding smartly based on performance data, competition, and commercial intent. This is where it’s important we align with your business objectives.
Data driven optimisation - Continually refining keywords, ad copy, audiences, and landing pages to improve results over time. This is where we see CPAs decrease (Cost-Per-Acquisition).
In short: relevance + strategy + smart optimisation = stronger performance.
Not quite sure what your ideal customers are searching for? That’s where we come in.As part of our PPC audit, we carry out in depth keyword research to pinpoint exactly which terms your business should be bidding on, helping you show up for the searches that really matter. In a priority order to put your business in front of people exactly when they’re looking for what you offer.
The benefits of PPC
PPC advertising isn’t just our favourite pastime, it also has so many benefits for your business including:
Immediate visibility - PPC can get your business to the top of search results quickly
Precise audience targeting - You can reach exactly the right people through keyword, demographic, interest, behaviour, location, and even device type targeting.
Budget control - Set a budget and you can scale up or down based on performance and seasonality.
Multi-channel visibility under one platform (i.e. Google search, display, video/YouTube, Gmail, Mapps, apps, AI and programmatic) - You’re able to appear across multiple channels and touchpoints within one advertising ecosystem, maximising brand visibility and multi-channel cohesion under one platform.
It’s measurable - Every single interaction can be tracked and monitored, giving you exact numbers. With the correct conversion tracking you can follow users all the way from ad click to sale, form fill, booking, phone call and measure conversions.
Complements SEO - It's great to use PPC to drive fast traffic while your organic strategy builds momentum, and gain keyword insights to strengthen your SEO strategy.
Increased brand awareness - Even if users don’t click, consistent visibility across the Internet and search results reinforces brand recognition and trust over time.
Types of PPC ad
A strong PPC strategy usually combines several ad types, each playing a specific role in driving awareness, consideration and conversions. These most popular ad types are:
Search Ads - Capture high-intent lower-funnel users actively in-market searching for a business's products or service, driving immediate conversions and revenue.
Shopping Ads - Showcase products directly within Google Shopping results, maximising visibility, click-through rate and sales through an optimised product feed (via Google Merchant Centre).
Performance Max - AI-driven, full funnel campaign combining Search, Shopping, Display network, YouTube, Gmail and Discover to drive awareness, traffic and conversions in one campaign structure (PMax).
Dynamic Remarketing - Re-engage users who viewed products or abandoned baskets, encouraging them to return and complete purchases.
Demand Gen - Upper-funnel visual campaigns across YouTube and Discover to build brand awareness and generate new demand before users actively search.
Video - Ads shown before, during, or alongside YouTube videos, ideal for brand awareness and story-telling.
Display - Visual image ads shown across potentially millions of websites, apps, and Google properties within their Display Network.
What is an example of PPC?
A great example of Search, PMax, Demand Gen, AI Max ads in action is the Google advertising we manage for a UK compliance training provider looking to increase qualified leads through paid search advertising. Our PPC experts at ADA Digital Marketing helped NCT (National Compliance Training) refine their keyword targeting, segmentation of campaigns, optimise ad copy, and improve landing page performance to capture high-intent search traffic.
As a result, conversions more than doubled (+103% MoM) while cost per lead dropped by -29% MoM, proving that a human-led, focused PPC approach delivers real results. Read more in our case study.
How does PPC fit into a marketing strategy?
PPC plays a key role in any marketing strategy as a fast acting, precision targeted channel for driving high quality traffic to your website.
As part of a broader digital marketing strategy, PPC complements ongoing SEO (search engine optimisation) efforts. While SEO builds an owned sustainable, organic growth over time, PPC generates instant traffic, supports keyword testing, and provides valuable data insights that can strengthen your long term optimisation strategy and deliver returns at a faster pace.
The parts of a PPC campaign
A PPC campaign is structured in clear layers to keep targeting organised, segmented, performance measurable and scalable. Setup and clarity are key foundations to success.
Campaign Type
This is the top level of your PPC structure. It defines where and how your ads will appear, such as search, display, shopping, or paid social. Each campaign has its own budget, targeting settings, and overall objective.
Ad Groups
Within each campaign are ad groups. These segment your campaign into focused themes typically based on specific products, services, or audience types. This structure keeps targeting relevant and improves performance by grouping common themes.
Ads
At the most granular level sit the ads themselves. These include your ad copy headlines, descriptions, images, videos, assets and calls to action. Ads are created to closely match the intent or audience defined in the ad group, helping to improve click-through rates, interaction rate and conversions.
By organising campaigns this way, you ensure clarity, control over budget allocation, and improved optimisation over time.
How does PPC differ from SEO?
PPC and SEO are both powerful marketing strategies, but they work in very different ways, even though the end goal is the same: greater visibility and more leads.
SEO focuses on building long-term organic visibility. We often describe it as a “slow burn” strategy because it can take time to see consistent results. It provides sustainable traffic growth without paying for every click, and becomes part of your owned marketing strategy that can result in less reliance on PPC. - Ads that promote app installs or drive in-app actions across Google Search, Play Store, YouTube and Display.
PPC, on the other hand, delivers much faster visibility. While you pay for traffic, you gain quick, measurable results that can be tracked, tested and optimised with precision.
Both strategies increase your search presence, and strong, well-optimised landing pages improve your domain authority and ad quality scores, helping you compete more effectively in ad auctions. If you have the budget and resources, we recommend running both together, and identifying opportunity gaps. When combined, PPC and SEO complement each other brilliantly, creating long term, sustainable growth and a strong, competitive presence for your business - dominating in both sponsored paid ads and organic landscapes, to ensure your business is found.
PPC Vs. SEO
How has PPC changed over the last 10 years
Over the past decade, PPC advertising has changed massively. Ten years ago, most campaigns were heavily keyword focused and search campaign based.
While keywords remain a vital foundation, PPC has evolved into a far more data-driven and multi-channel marketing approach. Google has introduced powerful machine learning tools that help advertisers optimise campaigns in real time, analysing signals like user intent, device, location, time of day and even past browsing behaviour.
Instead of relying purely on traditional search ad campaigns, we can now use a mix of campaign types that work together to maximise results. AI-driven formats such as Google PMax, AI Max and Demand Gen campaigns allow us to reach users in multiple places including:
Search
Shopping
Display
Video/YouTube
Email/Gmail
In-App/Discovery feeds
These formats lean heavily on automation, using machine learning to decide where ads show, who sees them, and which ad creative performs best. With this ever evolving world of AI and machine learning the expert human touch remains as important as ever. Google increasingly relies on quality inputs like clear objectives, clear strategy, strong creative assets, audience insights, and first-party data to help guide their machine learning systems. This means experienced marketers still play a vital role in setting the right direction for campaigns, defining clear goals, and interpreting performance data to make educated, strategic decisions.
At ADA Digital Marketing, we’re definitely not short of those PPC experts. Our team not only has decades of hands-on experience, as Google Partners, but they also have a strong understanding of modern platforms, first party data management and automation ensuring campaigns are driven by both innovative technology and smart strategy.
If you’re ready to get your Google Ads up to speed, chat to one of our PPC specialists.
They’ll help bring your business advertising into the AI-era and beyond, continually adapting your campaigns to keep pace with the latest platform updates, exciting AI developments, and changes in the crazy world of digital advertising.
What our ADA Digital experts say:
“Over the past decade, PPC has shifted from a keyword-first space to an audience-first strategy. What used to be about bidding on intent signals is now about interpreting data that is often fragmented, within disparate privacy-conscious ecosystems.” - Chris Gedge, PPC Specialist
“I started working with Google Ads over 20 years ago - there isn’t much I haven’t seen over that period, and not much we at ADA can’t identify and solve for a business. PPC has evolved dramatically over the past decade from manual CPC bidding per keyword, into an AI-driven top-to-bottom funnel system that is designed, delivers and can be scaled with the right foundations in place. Unlocking the ability to put your business in front of the right person, at the right time, with the right message, requires layered campaign types by intent; from search and shopping, to pmax and demand gen, we have more coverage and intelligent options than ever available, to enable us to target audiences better than ever and nurture prospects efficiency while maximising ROAS, and proving ROI. PPC is no longer just about search, it’s about utilising all the tools available to not just convert demand but create demand.” - Tom Murrell, Digital Director
How to get started with PPC
At ADA Digital Marketing, we live and breathe PPC (yes, really). With decades of experience and Google Partner status to back it up, we start with a thorough audit and build smart, strategic campaigns that place your brand right in front of the people actively searching for your business. We cut out the guess work with expertly managed ads designed to deliver real, measurable results.
If you’re serious about growth, we’re serious about your PPC - let’s chat.
Written by:
Scarlett Hanlon, Digital Marketing Executive
Approved by:
Tom Murrell, Digital Director & Chris Gedge, PPC Specialist