Until recently, many businesses were hesitant to become involved in paying to advertise products or services on the Internet, or were unaware that online paid advertising was even a viable alternative. Reasoning for this lack of enthusiasm varied for each business, but some major concerns expressed included the belief that a website listed on search engines is all that is needed for clients to find the website. There also was the false belief that potential clients distrust the Internet, and that these customers will visit only those URLs that crop up in the "natural" search result pages of search engines, such as Yahoo! and Google.

Coupled with these incorrect assumptions in the past, advertising on the Internet was at times viewed as a desperate move by a failing "dot-com" company to sell its products, but this has not been true for many years (if that perception was ever valid). Nowadays, pay per click is by far the most popular type of advertising medium and the fastest-growing trend for businesses seeking to expand their reach. It has finally come of age with major brands like American Express and Nike now firmly embracing the Internet as an equal to more traditional promotional outlets. The smaller companies will also follow suit and embrace the pay per click advertising model.

At its most basic level, advertisers do not pay anything for the ads displayed until someone actually clicks on them and gets redirected to the advertisers' website. Thus, if advertisers are paying per click, they are paying for potential customers who have actually arrived at their websites. This advertising model allows them to pay only for the clicks they get on their ads or banners. This concept of PPC (pay per click) has been around ever since evolution of the Internet and the rise of search engines. However, this type of online advertising in its current form began in 1997, when an entrepreneur named Bill Gross developed an idea for the first-ever search engine, named GoTo.com (the name was later changed to Overture, and renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions, when the company was taken over by Yahoo! in 2005).

Pay per click works well as an advertising medium if you follow some simple techniques or rules. First of all, you want the ad or banner to be catchy to the online world. This is not hard to achieve, but does take action in development. Pay per click advertising will continue to be the model followed by businesses small and large.