CPC (cost per click) is the price you pay for a click, the amount that an advertiser pays to a contextual system for click.
A lot of factors influence the cost per click. First, the advertisement itself, its quality and the efficiency index. Advertisements should match the request that the user enters in the search box. It is equally important that the page on which user arrives on after the ad click matches the request and the ad.
It’s also necessary to consider the competitive activity for keywords, the regions in which you want to provide advertisements and the time of ad impression.
The minimum cost per click on Google AdWords is $ 0.01.
CPC is not only about contextual advertising. Supposing you want to advertise on specific websites. To do this, you must pay the CPC to the site owner. In other words, CPC is a certain amount of money that an advertiser pays to the owner of site for each click that users make on the advertisement posted on this site.
There is such a thing as the CPC-network. These are advertising systems that offer advertisers and site owners co-operation within the cost-per-click payment model.
In the field of Internet advertising, CPC networks are often referred to as CPA networks (networks with a cost-per-action payment model).
All these systems are a kind of digital fair, offering advertisers and site owners cooperation in various payment models (per click, for impressions, for targeted action, for installing an application, etc.). The CPC model in such networks are less popular among advertisers since it is much more difficult to measure the effectiveness of clicks than the effectiveness of targeted actions (CPA model).