CPC and CPM sound similar but that last letter makes a whole heap of difference in online media buying. Cost per click (CPC) involves paying only for clicks, regardless of how many people actually see your advertising. Paying for clicks is good because the media owner is sharing performance risk with you. Clicks are a response from the consumer – you are paying for responses. THis is very different to CPM where you are paying for audience impressions. In other words you are simply paying to be seen. Being seen does not necessarily deliver a tangible business result. But a click visit to your site can. If you advertising with a lower budget where every penny (or cent) has to count in terms of short term business results, then you are better advised to go down the cost per click route.
Google is famously a major provider of click traffic. MSN’s Bing and Yahoo! are other major sites where advertising can be bought on a cost per click basis. If you want to move beyond classified type text boxes and into more visual display communication that is still traded on a cost per click basis, you can consider the larger online advertising networks who will trade on a CPC basis. However, unlike Bing and Yahoo! many of the larger players have minimum order values so if you are a smaller business, these may be too expensive.
