We recently saw this fascinating research from Bunnyfoot suggesting paid search performs better than organic search.
Consumers don’t realise paid ads are adverts
Their survey showed some stand-out facts:
- 40% of consumers don’t realise that Google Adwords are actually ads
- 81% of users clicked on paid results rather than organic results
It’s certainly true that the shading on PPC ads does not stand out clearly. In addition the heatmap that Bunnyfoot produced suggests that eyeballs are clearly focussed on the paid ads area.
Heat map of search results
Is PPC more valuable than organic search?
No, this survey does not prove this. The survey was limited to searches on ‘car insurance’, and is unlikely to produce the same results for other searches. However, the fact that consumers are unaware of the existence of ads does validate the importance of a good quality campaign.
It certainly suggests that Adwords have a key role to play in brand building and adds to the argument of bidding on your own brand terms.
By Iain Martin
2 comments
Vicky S says:
Mar 7, 2013
The F pattern of eye focus has been around as long as web pages. Do a google image search for ‘web heatmap’ and you will find countless examples from all manner of industries, business models and websites, including travel – it’s pretty standard along with norms of navigation.
However, the difference came in Google evolving the positioning of its ppc ads over time to capitalise on behaviour what was naturally there.
So yes those positions are more valuable, but only if they are clicked on, and your ppc ads deliver a valued response, which also has to factor in relevance in ad copy,landing page and conversion.
iain says:
Mar 8, 2013
Excellent comment Vicky. I think the point here is to question budget apportioned to SEO over PPC, but as you point out, the metrics are all available and need to be analysed.