CPC, PPC, CPM and CPA Meaning and Definition

CPC, PPC, CPM and CPA all are related to advertisement, but they all are not the same.

What is CPC, What does is stand for?

CPC Stands for Cost-Per-Click

It is the amount an advertiser pay for each click. If you are running CPC based ads on your blog, you don’t get paid unless the ad is clicked. Google Adsense is one of the example of CPC Ad network. CPC rate depends on the Keywords, and it is very effective if you receiving organic traffic. In case of Social Media and other traffic, you may see pathetic CPC rate under your Adsense account.

For Advertiser, CPC rate is the amount they pay for every click under PPC marketing campaign.

What is PPC

PPC Stands for Pay-Per-Click

PPC is the way to buy traffic. It could be very tough to rank your website with some keywords. In such case, Advertiser go for PPC campaign. PPC Campaign helps the advertisers to put their websites at the top of the search result. Advertiser pay Search Engine (e.g. Google) for each click.

Here is an example where the 2 websites are running PPC campaign to buy traffic.

Data recovery PPC

What does CPM Mean

CPM Stands for Cost-Per-Mile, also known as Cost-Per-Thousand-Impression

Advertising agency also use the term eCPM. It stands for Effective-Cost-Per-Mile

CPM ads let bloggers earn by serving ads. Whether visitors click on the ad or not, you get paid. BuySellAds is one of the best example of CPM based ad network. They allow to set fixed eCPM Rate for ad banners. For example, if you have set $2 eCPM rate for a banner, you will get $2 per thousand impression, whether the ad is clicked or not. Most of the ad networks use bidding option to serve CPM ads where advertisers bid on Ad space, and the one with the highest bidding wins ad space, and they serve their ads. So the eCPM rate provided by such ad network is not fixed.

If most of the traffic to your website is driven by Search Engines, you should use CPC ads to earn more, else CPM is better.

What is CPA

CPA Stands for Cost-Per-Acquisition or Cost-Per-Action

CPA is type of Affiliate Marketing where you get paid only when visitor make an action. For example, if you are serving an ad banner for a shopping website, and they pay you when your visitors click on the ad and buy something from their website, that’s a CPA ad. You don’t get paid if visitors click, and don’t make any action, like signing up, completing a survey, buying a product and so on…