Cost-per-click sinks below quality in online marketers’ shopping list
Quality of traffic and not bid prices is the driving factor for marketers choosing pay-per-click search placements, says a survey of 300 customers by Search123, a pay-per-click search engine. "When we surveyed advertisers a year ago, search engine marketers said that bid prices were the most important consideration. Today advertisers are squarely focused on traffic quality," said James Beriker, CEO, Search123. "The message to paid search engines is that traffic quality is not to be compromised. Marketers are looking not for clicks, but for `e-commerce productive` traffic that yields measurable ROI."
When the survey asked advertisers to rank which considerations are most important when selecting a pay-per-click search engine, 85% cited quality of search traffic, 67% chose bid prices and 51% chose quantity of search traffic.
The survey also found that a majority of marketers--53%--combine paid search with search engine optimization efforts to improve rankings within algorithmically-based engines. The survey also showed that pay-per-click marketers are heavily dependent on that kind of marketing, to the detriment of other forms. Only 31% of pay-per-click marketers use opt-in e-mail, followed by affiliate marketing at 24%. Banner ads finished last with 14%.
A full 72% track sales conversion data from keyword listings, "indicating that the majority of search engine marketers are sophisticated about the relationship between traffic quality and ROI," Search123 says.
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