PPC, PPV, CPV, CPA and PPA are various advertising means used in online marketing. They are used to drive traffic websites, landing pages or any online platform that could be used for business purposes.

Before we go into the differences, it is a good idea to know their definitions. Knowing what they mean and their characteristics will clearly point out major differences among them. Here are the abbreviations in full:

PPC – Pay per Click

PPV – Pay per View

CPV – Cost per View

CPA – Cost per Action

PPA – Pay per Action

By plainly looking at the abbreviations, I bet any layman would distinguish between them. Anyway, let’s get going.

PPC – Pay per Click

1. This is a way of advertising in which ads placed on websites or various online platforms are only charged when someone clicks on the ad.

2. If someone views the ad but does not click, there is no charge imposed

3. It is a good way of driving targeted traffic to a website and highly recommended in online ads.

4. Its prices range from as low as $0.01 per click to as high as $14.00 per click. This depends on various factors: competition, amount of traffic the ad would probably attract, among others.

5. One therefore needs to be careful in using this ad since it can easily drain your account overnight.

6. If you were to use it, I would recommend you use it to drive traffic to squeeze pages to collect emails for e-mail marketing.

7. Examples of these ads are the ads seen on”ads by Google” on various websites.

PPV – Pay per View & CPV – Cost per View

8. Both PPV and CPV mean the same thing; it is the amount one would be charged for any view to an ad regardless of any click made on it or not.

9. It is normally charged in groups of views, e.g. $0.30 per 1000 views and so on.

10. It would therefore prove to be quite cheap and effective if you were to get targeted traffic from it.

11. It can however be very expensive if your ad would have many views but less action.

12. Such ads there need to be very catchy and attract the required action in order to derive value from it.

13. A Facebook ad provides a good example of both PPC and PPV ads. I would recommend you take a look to see the difference.

CPA – Cost per Action and PPA – Pay Per Action

14. Both CPA and PPA mean the same thing. It is the amount charged or paid for every intended action done successfully. For instance joining an online program, filling a form, etc.

15. I find it similar to affiliate marketing only that the later is broader compared to CPA. Secondly, CPA targets long-term business relationships while affiliate marketing might not.

16. PPA is very costly compared to the others in this article but attracts great business value wherever it is involved.

17. In this type of ad, an action must be completed as required in order to be charged or paid.