The topic of today’s article goes into the differences between PPC and CPM. The first thing that we need to understand is that PPC stands for pay-per-click and CPM stands for cost-per-mille. Together, they are different types of payment methods in SEM, which stands for search engine marketing. Below are the differences between PPC and CPM.
Pay per click
- Type of advertising where the advertiser pays per click and not per impression
- Usually a bidding process
- Measured by looking at the resulting cost per click (CPC)
Cost per mille
- Alternative to PPC
- Type of advertising where the advertiser pays per 1,000 impressions
- Cost per Mille (one thousand)
- measured by looking at the number of impressions
- impressions = a view
Each of these SEM payment methods has different strengths and there is not one that is universally better than the other. It depends on what companies are looking to get out of using either method. The goal of PPC is to drive traffic to a website, track user behavior, and increase conversions. The goal of CPM is to increase its brand visibility and exposure. With these different goals in mind, users need to keep this in mind when they are deciding which strategy to use for their website.
