For those of you who haven’t used a Pay Per Click advertising platform like Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing, take notes.

Pay Per Click advertising refers to a style of advertising where the advertiser pays to display a link, an image, or text ad based on the number of clicks. Specific keywords are bid on and results are displayed, and advertisers pay their click prices to have their ad displayed for their selected keywords (Sponsored Results or Sponsored links).

PPC programs can deliver instant targeted visitors to your website in streaming amounts, but what are the downsides?

Click fraud.

It has been estimated that up to 38% of all clicks through PPC advertising are fraudulent. Allegations have even been brought against the major search engines for not doing their part to control the click fraud issues, and critics are quick to point out the fact that search engine companies earn 99% of their income through this advertising method.

Industry analysis’s predict a change in the next few years as PPC advertising shifts to CPA advertising with search engines. This will eliminate the click fraud issue, because advertisers will began to pay for actions instead of clicks. This form of advertising will become the most dominant form of online advertising.

That being said, is it still possible for a company to profit from PPC advertising?

Certainly!

A properly managed PPC advertising campaign can still be the most effective online advertising method for a company. It IS still possible to achieve a great ROI for a particular product or service, and will continue to drive the most traffic, clicks, and sales for online advertising for years to come.