• One-time payment – A one off payment is made in return for an advert being shown on that site for ever. Lots of online directories work in this way, indexing sites and charging a fee in return.
• CPM (cost per impression) – Advertisers pay a fixed rate for every 1000 times their adverts are shown. This is most effective for improving brand awareness as there are no guarantees that anybody will click on the link and visit the destination page. The price paid depends on many factors such as the prominence of the position on the page where the advert will be shown, the sites the adverts will be shown on and the estimated amount of traffic which can be provided.
• CPC/PPC (cost per click/pay per click) – Advertisers pay for each visitor that is sent to their site. Instead of paying for a particular listing or advert to be shown, they are only charged when people attracted to the advert click on it and are delivered to the advertiser’s page.
• CPA (cost per action) – This is the basis of affiliate marketing where affiliates only get paid a commission when the customer they refer goes on to make a purchase. An action can be a sale,  lead or signup but all of these work in the same way.
• CPE (cost per engagement) – A very new term to do with interactive adverts where an advertiser only gets charged when a visitor to a site interacts with a banner in some way.
• Email advertising – This can be billed in a number of ways, but involves sending emails to potential customers. Advertisers can pay for the number of emails sent, the number actually read (often a lot lower) or in many other ways.

All of the above have different pros and cons, which will be covered in more depth over the next few posts.