First the good news. Pay per click, as it has been perfected by Google, is unarguably the Web’s highest business achievement to date. Google has become an international corporate icon worth more than some of the most famous name brands of our generation like Disney, McDonalds and Hertz.
Editor’s Note: CPC advertising once leveled the playing field online for small firms versus big brands. Spiraling keyword bid prices have changed this dramatically. Is it time to look to cost per action as the logical successor to CPC?
Even more impressive is that pay per click has empowered literally hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs in their web businesses. Quite a few sites, which prior to pay per click would have trouble producing income, are earning more than $10,000 per month. Large sites such as NY Times, CNN, BusinessWeek and ESPN are also using pay per click to supplement their ad revenue.  Pay per click seems to be booming … but is the party soon to be over?