A Google AdWords property = CPC
With an AdWord advertising campaign with Google, you select an "AdWord" that you want to be a trigger for your ad to appear when someone does a search or visits a site with Google ads. There are only a few ads that can appear at any time, so whether your ad appears (and where it appears in the list) depends on how much you're willing to spend - your CPC = Cost Per Click bid. If you're willing to give Google up to $5 when someone clicks on your ad, then you'll be more likely to have the ad appear than someone who's willing to give them at most $4.
This doesn't mean that if you bid $5 you will pay $5 for every click though. There's other things involved, like the "quality" of the keyword (e.g. more restrictive terms have higher "quality" than more general terms), what others are bidding, and some other stuff.
Popular terms cost more.
When I first set up the "Microsoft is guilty" Adword, I was told that I needed to bid at least $5 to have the ad appear. But there are exceptions in the fine print...
More info is available at [link|http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/text/index.html|Google's Adwords Learning Center].
I've also noted that, at least for me, doing a Google search on "microsoft is guilty" has our MSiG forum show up 5th in the list of results, so putting up an ad for that probably isn't necessary.
There's a whole bunch of stuff that goes into these advertising decisions that I didn't appreciate before. No wonder Google has so much invested in it...
HTH a bit.
Cheers,
Scott.
