PPC Questions – Does Anyone Click Those Ads?

by Erin Steinbruegge in Blog, PPC on March 08, 2010

I talk with a lot of clients about search engine marketing strategy, particularly the benefits of developing an online marketing plan that incorporates both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising. Most business owners who are new to SEO or PPC strategy ask similar questions, and typically these questions relate to the “how’s” of the strategy and the type of results that can be expected. This particular post is dedicated to a question that I surprisingly hear quite frequently in regards to PPC advertising:

“Does anyone actually click on those ads?”

Fortunately, due to the nature of how Pay Per Click advertising works, it’s an easy question to answer. PPC advertising is a multibillion dollar industry that can only generate revenue when users click on the ads. No clicks = No cost to advertisers. If we examine PPC Adspend Data, it becomes clear that the answer is “Yes, many people are clicking on those ads.”

Moreover, not only are visitors clicking on PPC ads, but they are converting into a sale or lead at a respectable rate. In fact, PPC advertising has proven to be so effective that it was named by U.S. Senior Level Marketing Executives as the third most successful tactic for generating conversions:

Although it’s difficult to put an exact number of the amount of times a user will click on a sponsored ad over an organic search result since there are so many variables to that equation (what they are searching for and what their end goal is for example), here are a few reasons why people are clicking on PPC ads:

• Over the past 10 years ad serving technology has improved greatly, allowing the search engines to deliver ads that are more relevant to a user’s search.
• As marketing budgets have increasingly moved online, advertisers and online marketers have become more sophisticated with PPC, making their campaigns more relevant.
• Users have become more familiar and more trusting of ads. With the Google Network reaching 80% of Internet users worldwide, most people have experienced PPC advertising in some form or another.

PPC advertising is a great way to reach your target audience in a way that is both cost-effective and measurable. Lots of people are utilizing PPC ads to find what they are searching for online – Don’t miss out on the opportunity to reach them!

About the Author
Erin Steinbruegge is a Partner at The Loud Few and specializes in interactive marketing strategy. You can learn more about her here or follow her on twitter at twitter.com/steinburglar.