|
Number One? Not Always the Top Ad Strategy
Dec 20, 2006, By Brian Quinton, Direct Magazine
San Diego-based search
marketing firm Engine Ready recently came out with a look at the impact
pay-per-click ad position has had on the clickthrough and conversion
performance of a diverse selection of its managed accounts in the last year.
While the data doesn't rise to the level of a formal study or index, Engine
Ready marketing vice president Brian Lewis thinks the project holds some
interest as an informal look at ad position, bid strategy and performance.
"The days of campaign
success relying solely on good bid management are long over," he says,
largely thanks to the introduction of quality scoring, the changing
competitive climate, and advances in ad scheduling and the ability to target
by geography, demographics and other valuable criteria. In these conditions,
it may not always make good strategic sense to aim to be the top sponsored
listing on a term.
To take a closer look at that notion, Lewis and the Engine Ready team compiled
a year's worth of ad position, clickthrough, conversion and cost-per-action
metrics for a basket of the firm's clients conducting marketing campaigns on
Google AdWords. The sample size amounted to more than 190 million ad
impressions and more than 2 million clicks from clients working in a wide
range of industries, including B-to-B and consumer companies, aiming for both
lead generation and direct e-commerce.
The Engine Ready findings seem to confirm the notion that for many search
marketers interested in conversions rather than clicks, the PPC sweet spot
might actually be further down than the top slot. The first ad position did
indeed turn out to have the highest clickthrough rate (CTR) for the data set
under scrutiny: 3.0%, falling off significantly to 0.9% for the second spot
and 1.0% for the third.
But at position 4, the ad's
CTR rose back up to 2.3%, much better than positions 2 or 3. Lewis suggests
that this might be because Google very often runs three ads in the blue-shaded
"one box" above the natural search results, then move ads four and up to
the right rail-a position that can actually be more prominent than the lower
one box slots.
Page 1 2
3
|
