pay for placement

Pay for placement, or P4P, is an Internet advertising model in which advertisements appear along with relevant search results from a Web search engine. Under this model, advertisers bid for the right to present an advertisement with specific search terms (i.e., keywords) in an open auction. When one of these keywords is entered into the search engine, the results of the auction on that keyword are presented, with higher-ranking bids appearing more prominently on the page.