Pay-per-Click Management (PPC)
Pay-per-Click or PPC is an advertising model where advertisors bid on keywords and phrases that represent a target audience. When that target audience searches for those keywords or phrases, the advertisors ad will appear (assuming the bid was high enough). The ad could be display in the actual search engine, an advertising network, or a content web site or blog. This is configurable in most PPC services.
For an example, visit Google and search for Bellingham Mortgage. There are usually 1-3 PPC search results on top of the 'natural' search results and several more PPC results on the right of the page. The the area's outlined in red in the image below:
The major PPC providers are Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter.
Whatcom Web specializes in Google Adwords and we maintain the Google AdWords Qualified Professional status.