Pay-Per-Click

There are numerous advantages of pay-per-click over other concepts like impressions, as impressions alone do not guarantee anyone actually saw the ad, only that it displayed. A click is an indication that there was some level of interest, and verification someone actually saw the ad. Once the ad has been clicked you can at times glean a decent amount of information about this potential customer, how they came to see the ad in the first place, what they did once they clicked the ad, and other various location, demographic, and user agent data that is being tracked for the user. A pay-per-click campaign can have an average budget per day that can be adjusted and the ad can be retargeted as desired. A negative to the PPC model would be the need to maintain the parameters, as if left unchecked you might end up paying lots of $$$ for irrelevant clicks derived from similar but unrelated search terms. These have to be culled from the phrases that display the ad. Another downside to PPC ads is that consumers are ignoring ads, and advertisers need to find other ways to influence us (Dodson, 2016).

When it comes to promoted search ads, I will sometimes click the links of companies I do not care for, though I do pay attention to the ads and will click them if relevant. While marketing is not my department, I get involved in all aspects of the business I work at, and as such, I have set up several AdWords campaigns and get great results and when combined with the analytics data from the website you can see what users are doing once they click your ad which can be quite insightful.  I also promote open position ads on indeed.com which are pay per click, with the cost per click being tied to the number of other employers I am competing with to get my listing highlighted based on the position type and location. 

Reference

Dodson, I. (2016). The Art of Digital Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Creating Strategic, Targeted, and Measurable Online Campaigns, 1st Edition.