|
Lessons Catalogue
Lesson 5b: Billing Cycle
Basic Billing Process
|
|
 |
|
Learn how you are billed for advertising costs, and about different payment options that are available.
With cost-per-click (CPC) advertising, you only accrue advertising costs when users click your ad; you are charged for each click based on the CPC bid that you assign to each ad group or keyword. With cost-per-impression (CPM) advertising, you are charged for each time your ad is displayed, based on the CPM bid that you set for each ad group, keyword or placement.
At the end of your billing period, you will be charged for all costs accrued during that cycle. The AdWords billing period is defined by Google and is not the billing period of your credit card.
Available payment options depend on your billing address and chosen currency. In this topic, we will cover postpay payment by credit card, which is the most widely available method of payment.
Google currently accepts Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB, and debit cards with a MasterCard or Visa logo. Please refer to the Billing Outside the US lesson to learn about direct debit, bank transfer, and Switch/Solo payment methods available in countries where credit cards are not widely used.
Depending on the payment methods offered in your location, you may also have the option to pay for your advertising prior to receiving clicks (prepay) or after receiving clicks (postpay).
With our prepay option, we will deduct charges from your pre-paid balance each time a Google user clicks on your ads. Your ads run almost immediately after payment is received.
Our postpay option allows you to pay after users click on your ads and you accrue charges. Your ads run almost immediately after submitting your credit card and billing information.
Determine the payment options available for your billing address and currency.
In addition to these payment options, a select group of advertisers also has the option to receive bills once a month. You can learn more details about billing by reviewing the Billing lesson.
Your credit card is charged based on your AdWords billing cycle. When you create and activate your account with a credit card, debit card or direct debit, Google starts running your ads almost immediately. We then charge you every 30 days unless your advertising costs reach a certain threshold within your 30-day billing cycle.
We won't charge you before 30 days unless you earn £50 worth of clicks or impressions, depending on whether you're running a CPC or CPM campaign. We'll charge you the first time that your account reaches £50 within 30 days. Then we'll let you accrue £100 worth of clicks before charging you within the subsequent 30 days.
If you reach your £200 limit within 30 days, Google will bill you and raise your billing threshold to £350. Once you reach the £350 threshold, you'll be billed again and your threshold will be raised to £500, the maximum allowed. Remember that the amount billed may be in excess of the threshold since ads will continue to run and generate charges between the time that the billing cycle is triggered and the time the charge is completed.
The activation fee, along with any other advertising costs accrued, is charged to your credit card at the end of your first billing period.
|
