I’m resuming my writing-the-book myopia, so posting will be light over the next weeks. However, when I find fun facts and such from my writing/research, I just have to share it. This graph comes from Mary Meeker’s research report on Search. It shows how PPC on particular terms has rise, and the raw potential of paid search against mutliple-word keyphrases.
If you look one level deeper than CPC’s – into the different conversion rates and profitability of terms that make up the base of Meeker’s pyramid – the story becomes much more interesting, and a different investment conclusion emerges than the one Meeker’s pyramid implies, namely, that paid search traffic is and will be significantly undervalued for at least 2-3 more years.
Prices will rise if there’s not enough inventory on the web. I think RSS PPC is a good example how inventory can be expanded.
But RSS inventory is not nearly as valuable as search inventory because users are in a different mode when scanning an RSS listing.
The reason search ads are so valuable is that they intercept users in the exact moment where they are looking for a place to do business (assuming sufficiently targeted keywords) or at least when users are looking for a website for a specific purpose (with keywords that are typical for an earlier stage of the buying process).
I agree that search ads are still undervalued because most marketing managers still don’t understand the difference between different modes of user behavior and thus the difference in value from catching people at different times, with search being close to the ideal time.
Is there any research or case study that has shown that organic and paid search together will generate a higher conversion rate than each of them alone?
No, but here’s a 11/4 webinar coming up on the topic, from Jupiter.
Hi Chris,
Thanks. Could you email me a link of the webinar?
Pavan Lee
I found a Jupiter Webinar on this topic in December. Is that the one you were talking about?
Sorry about forgetting the link, here it is:
http://cp.jupiterweb.com/index.php/266_default/e9711392713c3ace56bcea05123b1fd0