Ottaway Communications, Inc.
Payoff of Ads on Search Engines
It’s the classic question that we face with all of our clients: Should you spend money on a PPC campaign or on the optimization of your site to move it up on the Organic side? In a perfect world, you would want to do both, of course. But where’s the bigger payoff?
In a study by Engine Ready, the visitors who get to retail sites through sponsored links are more likely to buy than those who click on organic results. They also spend more: the average order of a paid linker was $11 higher, at $117.06.
Why would this be? One possible reason is that the greater content that typically raises the rank of the website on the Organic side is too much for the prospective customer. In fact, less may be more according to Alex Mindlin of the New York Times. August 9, 2009