Noob question alert... I've heard a lot about Google Adwords and PPC. Are they one and the same or is there anything that differentiates them? Also, I notice there is a sticky note in this section on adwords. This was last edited 2 years ago, is the information still current?
Adwords actually allows advertising in two different ways. One way is PPC - where the advertiser agrees a maximum amount they are willing to pay for each click or visitor sent to their offer. Adwords also allows you to advertise to the content network using PPV or pay per view. Then the advertiser pays Google up to a maximum amount for each 1000 times their ad is displayed - irrespective of whether the ad generates any clicks or not.
He is right,one more point to add,Adwords gives you option to rotate the keywords as per your needs,The best effect comes from the click through rate rather then impressions
I feel it's foolish to go for page impression counts as you buy adwords to get your website noticed by the visitors. If you are spending money, it should be worth some result which in this case may be generating traffic.
PPC is a general term, it's a form of advertising where an advertiser pays for every click generated through the PPC network. Like seafrontsteve said, Adwords is a combination of PPC and PPV network. PPC networks usually have bidding systems in place, there are also Yahoo and Microsoft/Bing PPC who have recently merged into 1.
PPV or paying for page impressions can be worth doing - but like everything online, you only find out by testing. When it does work, you can get lots of clicks at a much cheaper price than PPC - but it's down to how well your ad converts into clicks. For PPC you might want to allow 20 or 30 cents a click. For PPV the minimum might be $1 for 1000 views - but you have complete control, and can even choose the webistes ads are displayed on. So it does take more work up front - but if you can get your conversions up to 1% or 2% that works out at 10 or 5 cents a click - higher risk, but better reward