There are many ways to generate traffic at your website, If you some budget you can choose PPC services (Paid) or you can also choose SEO services (Free). You can also build links for your websites check here for Advance way of link building without spamming & also check search engine land blog post that described clearly about SEO & it's usage: http://searchengineland.com/library/all-things-seo
I definitely understand the details and information here CPC is very important for ad words I'm guessing if this person had quality ads he could rank for some SEO
Ain't AdWords is like the best way to go broke on advertisement? I won't call any names since I don't wanna get banned, but why not try AdExchanges with native adertising?