Gosh - I didn't see the original forum post or I would have jumped in there
I think a couple of members most likely requested vouchers and then got a little stuck with using them.
I'll start off with answering Arjen's initial question :
What is Google Adwords?
Google Adwords is a pay-per-click online advertising service.
Where do you find these Google Ads?
When you visit
www.google.com (or co.za) and search a keyword/phrase you will be offered a results page listing all the websites that relate to your query. They are ordered according to their relevancy and this ranking is determined by a Google algorithm. These results are called "organic" and are total free of charge. Now the "holy grail" of any website is to be listed on the
first page (or within the top 10) of these results (simply because most people never actually go further than the 1st page.)
Businesses spend big money on their website SEO (search engine optimisation) to make this happen, but a top 10 ranking can never be guaranteed by any web developer (for a number of reasons.)
Google has therefore introduced a paid listing called Adwords which allows businesses to pay for the privilege of appearing on the 1st results page. These ads/listings appear on either the top (in a pink square) or right hand side of the results page under the heading "Ads". Your ads also appear on Google's display network (but that's a topic for another post.)
I hope that is a quick but clear intro into what Adwords essentially is. I'd be happy to pop by tomorrow and go into more detail about what pay-per-click advertising is and how to utilize it for your business.
Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have.