PPC

What it means

PPC is paid advertising where the advertiser pays per click, not per impression. The price of a click comes out of an auction: both the bid and the quality of the ad and landing page decide it.

It differs from SEO in that the traffic can be switched on and off. It also stops the moment you stop paying - which is the difference between a channel and an asset.

PPC is a way of paying, not a figure: what the advertiser actually pays for one click is the CPC. Compared with paying for impressions, PPC shifts part of the risk to the ad platform - an ad nobody clicks costs nothing, but the platform then starts showing it less often and at a higher price.

How it works in practice

A campaign is judged on cost per acquired customer and on revenue, not on CTR and clicks. The first number requires measurable conversion and a connection to the CRM or the shop.

Three things decide the outcome: precise keywords with the wrong ones excluded, a landing page that matches the ad, and tracking leads through to a closed deal. Retargeting supplements a campaign but brings no new audience on its own.

Invoices for advertising come from platforms established in another EU member state. This is a service on which the customer accounts for VAT by self-assessment, including a company that is not a VAT payer but must register under § 7a. That is why we download the documents from the ad account every month, not only at year end.

What to watch out for

An unmeasured campaign spends the budget reliably - usually on broad, expensive keywords that never convert, on the wrong geography, and on people who have already bought. Ad spend is an ordinary cost, but without measurement it is cost with no hypothesis behind it.

Another trap is paying by card without downloading the invoice: the amount appears on the statement while the document stays in the platform’s admin. Without it there is no support for the expense or the VAT, and chasing it a year later means extra work and sometimes a penalty for declaring the tax late.