If you have a web site and would like to profit from it, one of the ways that many web site publishers monetize their site is with CPC ad networks. CPC ad networks are considered to be one of the best ways to earn a profit off of content sites and highly trafficked web sites on the web.

CPC Defined

CPC is an acronym for Cost per Click, it is an extremely useful technique used by advertisers to market and promote their web site. In essence, an advertiser using CPC will pay a fee for a specific action, in this case for a viewer to click on the advertiser.s ad and be sent to the advertiser.s web page. CPC is sometimes referred to as PPC (pay per click). These two terms are interchangeable.

Cost per click works by an advertiser bidding on keywords that are most likely to target a group of viewers that would most likely be searching for a specific product or service that they sell. For instance, an advertiser that sells golf clubs online would bid on the keywords .golf club. hoping that a potential consumer looking to buy golf clubs searches for the term and then sees the ad. Once the viewer sees the ad, he or she might click on the ad resulting in the viewer being taken to the advertisers. site, where hopefully a chance at a sale can be made.

Cost per click is extremely advantageous to an advertiser, because it gives the advertiser a low cost solution to find potential consumers that are actively searching for specific types of products. Cost per click is one of the best ways to target your products to a specific market at a fairly low cost. Advertisers are only charged a fee, based upon their bid when their ad is clicked. Cost per click works for large markets and very small niche markets.

CPC Ad Networks

CPC ad networks are the most popular advertising networks online, the most notable being Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture). There are two types of entities that can benefit from CPC ad networks, they are advertisers and publishers.

Advertisers find it extremely easy to set up an advertising campaign and reach their target market on the web. Because advertisers bid on keywords, they are able to choose the amount they pay for the cost of having a potential customer to view their site. Keyword bidding usually starts out at $.01 and can reach several dollars per click, however, the vast majority of bids usually fall far below $1 per click. In addition, advertisers can create a monthly or daily budget for their advertising campaign to reach as many potential customers that their budget allows. An advertiser that signs up with a CPC ad network is usually able to create an account, create a textual ad and have it shown to potential customers in usually less than one day.

Besides keyword cost per click ad networks there are two other categories, they include: Product CPC ad networks and Services CPC ad networks.

Product CPC ad networks allow their advertisers to send a feed of their product databases to the ad network. When a person searches for a specific product, various links for products from advertisers appear. It should be noted that the advertisers that pay the most for a product to appear, will usually appear at the top of the results. However, it should be noted that once products from many manufactures are listed on the screen, the viewer can easily sort by product price. Product CPC ad networks are sometimes referred to as Price comparison sites or Product comparison engines.

Service CPC ad networks are very similar to product CPC, except they allow their advertisers to send a feed of their service database. The most popular services can include airfare, hotel rooms, etc.

CPC Ad Networks and Publishers

While advertisers find CPC ad networks to be extremely beneficial in targeting their products and services to online viewers, publishers that develop web sites also can profit as well. Monetizing almost any kind of content web site is extremely easy with CPC ad networs. Just as there are many ad networks for advertisers to promote their goods, there are also a wide range of networks that make it extremely easy for publishers to monetize their web sites. CPC ad networks such as Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publishers Network, etc pay a commission to a publisher for allowing them to post their CPC ads on their site. Each time a viewer on the publishers site clicks an ad, the ad network pays a commission. Many ad networks do not give exact details on the amount they pay for each ad clicked, however estimates vary from 10% to 70%.