The bidding price is not necessarily the actual price that will be charged for priority placement and, as a PPC system, a fee will only be applied when a link is clicked on. In other words, a customer only pays Baidu for the placement of their ad when it has been clicked on by Baidu’s search engine users. Total charges will be calculated as cost per click multiplied by the number of clicks. While having the potential to result in high charges due to fraudulent clicks, Baidu employs a safeguard that monitors click patterns and timestamps in order to detect such behavior and withhold related charges. Thus, only clicks from legitimate search engine users will be charged to a customers account.
While a majority of Baidu’s online marketing revenues come from the P4P system that utilizes PPC, customers may also be charged based on the number of telephone calls directed to them from Baidu, successful flights or hotel room bookings, the number of users registered on customers’ sites, or the duration of time that an advertisement appears on Baidu’s or Baidu Union members’ web properties.